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C. H. SPURGEON 




JOHN «* «* j» j» j» jt. 
LOUGHMAN'S^ * 
PICTURES **.* 



OR, MORE OF HIS PLAIN TALK 
FOR PLAIN PEOPLE J* J* J* j* 



by C: H. SPURGEON 



■ 

/v (.5 -.„. v , < 



Philadelphia^* ^ ^» J* J* 

HENRY ALTEMUS 



■SI J 



Copyrighted, 1896, by Henry Altemus. 



HENRY ALTEMUS, MANUFACTURER, 
PHILADELPHIA. 



PREFACE. 

"JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S TALK" has 
not only obtained an immense circu- 
lation, but it has exercised an influence 
for good. Although its tone is rather moral 
than religious,, it has led many to take the 
first steps by which men climb to better 
things, and this fact has moved me to at- 
tempt a second book of the same character. 
I have continued to use the simplest form 
of our mother tongue, so that if any read- 
ers must need have refined language they 
had better leave these pages before they are 
quite disgusted. To smite evil — and espe- 
cially the monster evil of drink — has been 
my earnest endeavor, and assuredly there 
is need. It may be that the vice of drunk- 
enness is not more common than it used to 
be ; but it is sufficiently rampant to cause 
sorrow in every Christian bosom, and to 
lead all lovers of their race to lift up their 
voices against it. I hope that the plain 
speech of John Ploughman will help in 
that direction. 

It is quite out of the question for the 
compiler of such proverbial talk as this to 
acknowledge the sources from which the 

(3) 



4 PREFACE. 

quaint sayings have been derived, for they 
are too numerous. I have gathered ex- 
pressions and verses here, there, and every- 
where ; and perhaps the most simple way is 
to deny all claim to originality, and confess 
myself a gatherer of other men's stuffs. It 
is not quite so, but that is near enough. I 
have, however, borrowed many rhymes 
from " Thomas Tusser's Points of Good 
Husbandry/' a book which is out of date, 
and forgotten, and never likely to be re- 
printed. 

I have somewhat indulged the mirthful 
vein, but ever with so serious a purpose 
that I ask no forgiveness. Those who see 
a virtue in dulness have full permission to 
condemn, for a sufficient number will 
approve. 

May the kindness shown to the former 
volume be extended to this also. 

C. H. SPURGEON. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 

If the cap fits, wear it 7 

Burn a candle at both ends, and it will soon be 

gone 12 

Hunchback sees not his own hump, but he sees his 

neighbor's 19 

It is hard for an empty sack to stand upright ... 23 

He who would please all will lose his donkey . . 32 

All are not hunters that blow the horn 38 

A handsaw is a good thing, but not to shave with . 43 

Don't cut off your nose to spite your face .... 50 
He has a hole under his nose, and his money runs 

into it 54 

Every man should sweep before his own door . . 63 
Scant feeding of man or horse is small profit and 

sure loss 67 

Never stop the plough to catch a mouse .... 75 

A looking-glass is of no use to a blind man ... 79 

He has got the fiddle, but not the stick .... 86 
Great cry and little wool, as the man said who 

clipped the sow 89 

You may bend the sapling, but not the tree ... 94 
A man may love his house, though he ride not on 

the ridge 99 

Great drinkers think themselves great men . . . 107 

(5) 



6 CONTENTS. 

PAGE. 

Two dogs fight for a bone, and a third runs away 

with it 115 

He lives under the sign of the cat's foot . . . .118 
He would put his finger in the pie, so he burnt his 

nail off 125 

You can't catch the wind in a net 130 

Beware of the dog • 136 

Like cat like kit 147 

A horse which carries a halter is soon caught . . . 153 

An old fox is shy of a trap 157 

A black hen lays a white egg 161 

He looks one way and pulls the other 164 

Stick to it and do it 167 

Don't put the cart before the horse 178 

A leaking tap is a great waster 184 

Fools set stools for wise men to stumble over . . 192 
A man in a passion rides a horse that runs away 

with him 195 

Where the plough does not go, the weeds will grow 199 
All is lost that is poured into a cracked dish . . . 203 

Grasp all and lose all 207 

Scatter and increase 209 

Every bird likes its own nest 213 



JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 



IF THE CAP FITS, WEAR IT. 




Friendly Readers, 

Last time I made a book I trod on 
some people's corns and bunions, and they 

(7) 



8 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

wrote me angry letters, asking, " Did you 
mean me ? " This time, to save them the 
expense of a halfpenny card, I will begin my 
book by saying — 

Whether I please or whether I tease, 

I'll give you my honest mind ; 
If the cap should fit, pray wear it a bit, 

If not, you can leave it behind. 

No offence is meant; but if anything in 
these pages should come home to a man, 
let him not send it next door, but get a 
coop for his own chickens. What is the 
use of reading or hearing for other people ? 
We do not eat and drink for them : why 
should we lend them our ears and not our 
mouths ? Please then, good friend, if you 
find a hoe on these premises, weed your 
own garden with it. 

I was speaking with Will Shepherd the 
other day about our master's old donkey, 
and I said, " He is so old and stubborn, he 
really is not worth his keep. ,, " No," said 
Will, " and worse still, he is so vicious, 
that I feel sure he'll do somebody a mis- 
chief one of these days." You know they 
say that walls have ears ; we were talking 
rather loud, but we did not know that 



IF THE CAP FITS, WEAR IT. 9 

there were ears to haystacks. We stared, 
I tell you, when we saw Joe Scroggs come 
from behind the stack, looking as red as a 
turkey-cock, and raving like mad. He 
burst out swearing at Will and me, like a 
cat spitting at a dog. His monkey was up 
and no mistake. He'd let us know that he 
was as good a man as either of us, or the 
two put together, for the matter of that. 
Talking about him in that way ; he'd do — 
I don't know what. I told old Joe we had 
never thought of him, nor said a word about 
him, and he might just as well save his 
breath to cool his porridge, for nobody 
meant him any harm. This only made him 
call me a liar, and roar the louder. My 
friend, Will, was walking away, holding his 
sides, but when he saw that Scroggs was 
still in a fume, he laughed outright, and 
turned round on him and said, " Why, Joe, 
we were talking about master's old donkey, 
and not about you ; but, upon my word, I 
shall never see that donkey again without 
thinking of Joe Scroggs." Joe puffed and 
blowed, but perhaps he thought it an awk- 
ward job, for he backed out of it, and Will 
and I went off to our work in rather a merry 



io JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

cue, for old Joe had blundered on the truth 
about himself for once in his life. 

The aforesaid Will Shepherd has some- 
times come down rather heavy upon me in 
his remarks, but it has done me good. It 
is partly through his home thrusts that I 
have come to write this new book, for he 
thought I was idle ; perhaps I am, and per- 
haps I am not. Will forgets that I have 
other fish to fry and tails to butter ; and he 
does not recollect that a ploughman's mind 
wants to lie fallow a little, and can't give a 
crop every year. It is hard to make rope 
when your hemp is all used up, or pancakes 
without batter, or rook pie without the birds ; 
and so I found it hard to write more when I 
had said just about all I knew. Giving 
much to the poor doth increase a man's 
store, but it is not the same with writing ; 
at least, I am such a poor scribe that I 
don't find it come because I pull. If your 
thoughts only flow by drops, you can't pour 
them out in bucketfuls. 

However, Will has ferreted me out, and 
I am obliged to him so far. I told him the 
other day, what the winkle said to the pin : 
" Thank you for drawing me out, but you 



IF THE CAP FITS, WEAR IT n 

are rather sharp about it." Still, Master 
Will is not far from the mark : after three 
hundred thousand people had bought my 
book it certainly was time to write another : 
so, though I am not a hatter, I will again 
turn cap-maker, and those who have heads 
may try on my wares ; those who have none 
won't touch them. 

So, friends, 

I am, 

Yours, rough and ready, 

John Ploughman. 



BURN A CANDLE AT BOTiH ENDS, 
AND IT WILL SOON BE GONE. 




WELL may he scratch his head who 
burns his candle at both ends; but, 
do what he may, his light will soon begone, 
and he will be all in the dark. Young Jack 

(12) 



NEVER BURN A CANDLE AT BOTH ENDS. 13 

Careless squandered his property, and now 
he is without a shoe to his foot. His was 
a case of " easy come, easy go : soon gotten, 
soon spent." He that earns an estate will 
keep it better than he that inherits it. As 
the Scotchman says, " He that gets gear 
before he gets wit is but a short time master 
of it," and so it was with Jack. His money 
burnt holes in his pocket. He could not 
get rid of it fast enough himself, and so he 
got a pretty set to help him, which they did 
by helping themselves. His fortune went 
like a pound of meat in a kennel of hounds. 
He was everybody's friend, and now he is 
everybody's fool. 

He came in to old Alderman Greedy's 
money, for he was his nephew ; but, as the 
old saying is, the fork followed the rake, 
the spender was heir to the hoarder. God 
has been very merciful to some of us in 
never letting money come rolling in upon 
us, for most men are carried off their legs if 
they meet with a great wave of fortune. 
Many of us would have been bigger sinners 
if we had been trusted with larger purses. 
Poor Jack had plenty of pence, but little 
sense. Money is easier made than made 



14 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

the use of. What is hard to gather is easy to 
scatter. The old gentleman had lined his 
nest well, but Jack made the feathers fly 
like flakes of snow in winter-time. He got 
rid of his money by shovelfuls and then by 
cartloads. After spending the interest, he 
began swallowing the capital, and so killed 
the goose that laid the golden eggs. He 
squandered his silver and gold, in ways 
which must never be told. It would not go 
fast enough, and so he bought race-horses to 
run away with it. He got into the hands 
of blacklegs, and fell into company of 
which we shall say but little; only when 
such madams smile, men's purses weep : 
these are a well without a bottom, and the 
more a fool throws in, the more he may. 
The greatest beauty often causes the great- 
est ruin. Play, women, and wine are enough 
to make a prince a pauper. 

Always taking out and never putting 
back soon empties the biggest sack, and so 
Jack found it ; but he took no notice till his 
last shilling bade him good-bye, and then 
he said he had been robbed ; like silly Tom 
who put his finger in the fire and said it was 
his bad luck. 



NE VER B URN A CANDLE AT BO TH ENDS. 1 5 

His money once flashed like dew in the sun ; 
When bills became due, of cash he had none. 



" Drink and let drink " was his motto ; 
every day was a holiday and every holiday 
was a feast. The best of wines and the 
dearest of dainties suited his tooth, for he 
meant to lead a pig's life, which they say is 
short and sweet. Truly, he went the whole 
hog. The old saying is, " a glutton young, 
a beggar old," and he seemed set upon prov- 
ing it true. A fat kitchen makes a lean 
will ; but he can make his will on his 
finger-nail, and leave room for a dozen cod- 
icils. In fact, he will never want a will at all, 
for he will leave nothing behind him but old 
scores. Of all his estate there is not enough 
left to bury him with. What he threw away 
in his prosperity would have kept a coat on 
his back and a dumpling in his pot to his 
life's end ; but he never looked beyond his 
nose, and could not see to the end of that. 
He laughed at prudence, and now prudence 
frowns at him. Punishment is lame, but it 
comes at last. He pays the cost of his folly 
in body and in soul, in purse and in person, 
and yet he is still a fool, and would dance to 



16 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

the same tune again if he had another chance. 
His light purse brings him a heavy heart, 
but he couldn't have his cake and eat it too. 
As he that is drunk at night is dry in the 
morning, so he that lavished money when he 
had it feels the want of it all the more when it 
is gone. His old friends have quite dropped 
him ; they have squeezed the orange, and 
now they throw away the peel. As well 
look for milk from a pigeon as help from a 
fellow who loved you for your beer. Pot 
friends will let you go to pot, and kick you 
when you are down. 

Jack has worse wants than the want of 
money, for his character is gone, and he is 
like a rotten nut, not worth the cracking : 
the neighbors say he is a ne'er-do-well, not 
worth calling out of a cabbage garden. No- 
body will employ him, for he would not 
earn his salt, and so he goes from pillar to 
post, and has not a place to lay his head in. 
A good name is better than a girdle of gold, 
and when that is gone, what has a man left ? 

What has he left ? Nothing upon earth ! 
Yet the prodigal son has still a Father in 
heaven. Let him arise and go to him, 
ragged as he is. He may smell of the 



NEVER BURN A CANDLE AT BOTH ENDS. 17 

swine-trough, and yet he may run straight 
home, and he shall not find the door locked. 
The great Father will joyfully meet him, and 
kiss him, and cleanse him, and clothe him, 
and give him to begin a new and better life. 
When a sinner is at his worst he is not too 
bad for the Saviour, if he will but turn from 
his wickedness and cry unto God for mercy. 
It's a long lane that has no turning, but the 
best of all turns is to turn unto the Lord 
with all your heart. This the great Father 
will help the penitent prodigal to do. If the 
candle has been burned all away, the Sun in 
the heavens is still alight. Look, poor 
profligate : look to Jesus, and live. His sal- 
vation is without money and without price. 
Though you may not have a penny to bless 
yourself with, the Lord Jesus will bless you 
freely. The depths of your misery are not 
so deep as the depth of God's mercy. If 
you are faithful and just in confessing the 
sins you would have forgiven, God will be 
faithful and just in forgiving the sins which 
you confess. 

But, pray, do not go on another day as 
you are, for this very day may be your last. 
If you will not heed a plain word from John 



1 8 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES, 

Ploughman, which he means for your good, 
yet recollect this old-fashioned rhyme, 
which was copied from a grave-stone : 

" The loss of gold is great, 

The loss of health is more, 
But the loss of Christ is such a loss 
As no man can restore." 



HUNCHBACK SEES NOT HIS OWN 

HUMP, BUT HE SEES HIS 

NEIGHBOR'S. 




HE points at the man in front of him, 
but he is a good deal more of a 
guy himself. He should not laugh at the 

(19) 



20 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

crooked until he is straight himself, and 
not then. I hate to hear a raven croak at 
a crow for being black. A blind man 
should not blame his brother for squinting, 
and he who has lost his legs should not 
sneer at the lame. Yet so it is, the rotten- 
est bough cracks first, and he who should 
be the last to speak is the first to rail. Be- 
spattered hogs bespatter others, and he who 
is full of fault finds fault. They are most 
apt to speak ill of others who do most ill 
themselves. 

" We're very keen our neighbor's hump to see, 
We're blind to that upon our back alone; 
E'en though the lump far greater be, 
It still remains to us unknown." 

It does us much hurt to judge our neigh- 
bors, because it flatters our conceit, and our 
pride grows quite fast enough without feed- 
ing. We accuse others to excuse ourselves. 
We are such fools as to dream that we are 
better because others are worse, and we 
talk as if we could get up by pulling others 
down. What is the good of spying holes 
in people's coats when we can't mend 
them? Talk of my debts if you mean to 
pay them ; if not, keep your red rag be- 



ONE HUNCHBA CK LA UGHS AT ANO THER. 2 1 

hind your ivory ridge. A friend's faults 
should not be advertised, and even a 
stranger's should not be published. He 
who brays at an ass is an ass himself, 
and he who makes a fool of another is a 
fool himself. Don't get into the habit of 
laughing at people, for the old saying is, 
" Hanging's stretching and mocking's 
catching." 

Some must have their joke whoever they poke ; 
For the sake of fun mischief is done, 
And to air their wit full many they hit. 

Jesting is too apt to turn into jeering, and 
what was meant to tickle makes a wound. 
It is a pity when my mirth is another man's 
misery. Before a man cracks a joke he 
should consider how he would like it him- 
self, for many who give rough blows have 
very thin skins. Give only what you 
would be willing to take: some men 
throw salt on others, but they smart if a 
pinch of it falls on their own raw places. 
When they get a Roland for their Oliver, 
or a tit for their tat, they don't like it ; yet 
nothing is more just. Biters deserve to be 
bitten. 



22 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

We may chide a friend, and so prove our 
friendship, but it must be done very dain- 
tily, or we may lose our friend for our 
pains. Before we rebuke another we must 
consider, and take heed that we are not guilty 
of the same thing, for he who cleanses a 
blot with inky fingers makes it worse. To 
despise others is a worse fault than any we 
are likely to see in them, and to make 
merry over their weaknesses shows our 
own weakness and our own malice too. 
Wit should be a shield for defence, and not 
a sword for offence. A mocking word cuts 
worse than a scythe, and the wound is 
harder to heal. A blow is much sooner 
forgotten than a jeer. Mocking is shock- 
ing. Our minister says " to laugh at in- 
firmity or deformity is an enormity.'* He 
is a man who ought to know a thing or two p 
and he puts a matter as pat as butter. 

" Who ridicules his neighbor's frailty 
Scoffs at his own in more or less degree : 
Much wiser he who others' lets alone, 
And tries his hardest to correct his own." 



IT IS HARD FOR AN EMPTY SACK 
TO STAND UPRIGHT. 




SAM may try a fine while before he will 
make one of his empty sacks stand 
upright. If he were not half daft he would 
have left off that job before he began it, 

(23) 



24 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

and not have been an Irishman either. He 
will come to his wit's end before he sets the 
sack on its end. The old proverb, printed 
at the top, was made by a man who had 
burnt his fingers with debtors, and it just 
means that when folks have no money and 
are over head and ears in debt, as often as 
not they leave off being upright, and tum- 
ble over one way or another. He that has 
but four and spends five will soon need no 
purse, but he will most likely begin to use 
his wits to keep himself afloat, and take to 
all sorts of dodges to manage it. 

Nine times out of ten they begin by mak- 
ing promises to pay on a certain day when 
it is certain they have nothing to pay with. 
They are as bold at fixing the time as if 
they had my lord's income : the day comes 
round as sure as Christmas, and then they 
haven't a penny-piece in the world, and so 
they make all sorts of excuses and begin to 
promise again. Those who are quick to 
promise are generally slow to perform. 
They promise mountains and perform mole- 
hills. He who gives you fair words and 
nothing more feeds you with an empty 
spoon, and hungry creditors soon grow 



EMPTY SACKS, 25 

tired of that game. Promises don't fill the 
belly. Promising men are not great favor- 
ites if they are not performing men. When 
such a fellow is called a liar he thinks he is 
hardly done by ; and yet he is so, as sure 
as eggs are eggs, and there's no denying it, 
as the boy said when the gardener caught 
him up the cherry-tree. People don't think 
much of a man's piety when his promises 
are like pie-crust, made to be broken : they 
generally turn crusty themselves and give 
him a bit of their mind. Like old Tusser, 
who said of such an one : 

" His promise to trust to is slippery as ice, 
His credit much like to the chance of the dice." 

Creditors have better memories than debt- 
ors, and when they have been taken in 
more than once they think it is time that 
the fox went to the furrier, and they had 
their share of his skin. Waiting for your 
money does not sweeten a man's temper, 
and a few lies on the top of it turn the milk 
of human kindness into sour stuff. Here is 
an old-fashioned saying which a bad payer 
may put in his pipe, and smoke or not, as 
he likes: 



26 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

" He that promiseth till no man will trust him, 
He that lieth till no man will believe him, 
He that borroweth till no man will lend him, 
Let him go where no man knoweth him." 

Hungry dogs will eat dirty puddings, and 
people who are hard up very often do dirty 
actions. Blessed be God, there is some 
cloth still made which will not shrink in 
the wetting, and some honesty which holds 
on under misfortune ; but too often debt is 
the worst kind of poverty, because it breeds 
deceit. Men do not like to face their cir- 
cumstances, and so they turn their backs on 
the truth. They try all sorts of schemes to 
get out of their difficulties, and like the 
Banbury tinker, they make three holes in 
the saucepan to mend one. They are like 
Pedley, who burnt a penny candle in look- 
ing for a farthing. They borrow of Peter 
to pay Paul, and then Peter is let in for 
it. To avoid a brook they leap into a 
river, for they borrow at ruinous interest 
to pay off those who squeeze them tight. 
By ordering goods which they cannot pay 
for, and selling them for whatever they can 
get, they may put off one evil day, but 
they only bring on another. One trick 



EMPTY SACKS. 27 

needs another trick to back it up, and thus 
they go on over shoes and then over boots. 
Hoping that something will turn up, they 
go on raking for the moon in a ditch, and 
all the luck that comes to them is like 
Johnny Toy's, who lost a shilling and 
found a two-penny loaf. Any short cut 
tempts them out of the high road of honesty, 
and they find after awhile that they have 
gone miles out of their way. At last 
people fight shy of them, and say that they 
are as honest as a cat when the meat is out 
of reach, and they murmur that plain deal- 
ing is dead, and died without issue. Who 
wonders ? People who are bitten once are 
in no hurry to put their fingers into the 
same mouth again. You don't trust a 
horse's heel after it has kicked you, nor 
lean on a staff which has once broken. 
Too much cunning overdoes its work, and 
in the long run there is no craft which is so 
wise as simple honesty. 

I would not be hard on a poor fellow, 
nor pour water on a drowned mouse : if 
through misfortune the man can't pay, why 
he can't pay, and let him say so, and do the 
honest thing with what little he has, and 



28 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

kind hearts will feel for him. A wise man 
does at first what a fool does at last. The 
worst of it is, that debtors will hold on long 
after it is honest to do so, and they try to 
persuade themselves that their ship will 
come home, or their cats will grow into 
cows. It is hard to sail over the sea in an 
egg-shell, and it is not much easier to pay 
your way when your capital is all gone. 
Out of nothing comes nothing, and you 
may turn your nothing over a long time be- 
fore it will grow into a ten-pound note. The 
way to Babylon will never bring you to 
Jerusalem, and borrowing, and diving deep- 
er into debt, will never get a man out of 
difficulties. 

The world is a ladder for some to go up 
and some to go down, but there is no need 
to lose your character because you lose 
your money. Some people jump out of the 
frying-pan into the fire; for fear of being 
paupers they become rogues. You find 
them slippery customers ; you can't bind 
them to anything : you think you have got 
them, but you can't hold them any longer 
than you can keep a cat in a wheelbarrow. 
The can jump over nine hedges, and nine 



EMPTY SACKS, 29 

more after that. They always deceive you, 
and then plead the badness of the times, or 
the sickness of their family. You cannot help 
them, for there's no telling where they are. 
It is always best to let them come to the 
end of their tether, for when they are 
cleaned out of their old rubbish they may 
perhaps begin in a better fashion. You can- 
not get out of a sack what is not in it, and 
when a man's purse is as bare as the back 
of your hand, the longer you patch him up 
the barer he will become, like Bill Bones, 
who cut up his coat to patch his waistcoat, 
and then used his trousers to mend his coat, 
and at last had to lie in bed for want of a 
rag to cover him. 

Let the poor, unfortunate tradesman hold 
to his honesty as he would to his life. The 
straight road is the shortest cut. Better 
break stones on the road than break the law 
of God. Faith in God should save a Christ- 
ian man from anything like a dirty action ; 
let him not even think of playing a trick, 
for you cannot touch pitch without being 
defiled therewith. Christ and a crust is 
riches, but a broken character is the worst 
of bankruptcy. All is not lost while up- 



30 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

Tightness remains ; but still it is hard to 
make an empty sack stand upright. 

There are other ways of using the old 
saying. It is hard for a hypocrite to keep 
up his profession. Empty sacks can't stand 
upright in a church any better than in a 
granary. Prating does not make saints, 
or there would be plenty of them. Some 
talkatives have not religion enough to 
flavor soup for a sick grasshopper, and 
they have to be mighty cunning to keep 
the game going. Long prayers and loud 
professions only deceive the simple, and 
those who see further than the surface soon 
spy out the wolf under the sheepskin. 

All hope of salvation by our own good 
works is a foolish attempt to make an empty 
sack stand upright. We are undeserving, 
ill-deserving, hell-deserving sinners at the 
best. The law of God must be kept 
without a single failure if w r e hope to be 
accepted by it ; but there is not one among 
us who has lived a day without sin. No, 
we are a lot of empty sacks, and unless the 
merits of Christ are put into us to fill us up, 
we cannot stand in the sight of God. The 



EMPTY SACKS. 31 

law condemns us already, and to hope for 
salvation by it is to run to the gallows to 
prolong our lives. There is a full Christ 
for empty sinners, but those who hope to 
fill themselves will find their hopes fail them. 



HE WHO WOULD PLEASE ALL 

WILL LOSE HIS DONKEY AND BE 

LAUGHED AT FOR HIS PAINS. 




HERE'S a queer picture, and this is the 
story which goes with it; you shall 
have it just as I found it in an old book. 
(32) 



THE OLD MAN AND HIS DONKEY. S3 

"An old man and his young son were driv- 
ing an ass before them to the next market 
to sell. ' Why have you no more wit/ says 
one to the man upon the way, ' than you 
and your son to trudge it a-foot, and let the 
ass go light ? ' So the old man set his son 
upon the ass, and footed it himself. * Why, 
sirrah/ says another after this, to the boy, 
* ye lazy rogue, you, must you ride, and let 
your old father go a-foot ? ' The old man 
upon this took down his son, and got up him- 
self. ' Do you see/ says a third, ' how the 
lazy old knave rides himself, and the poor 
young fellow has much ado to creep after 
him ? ' The father, upon this, took up his 
son behind him. The next they met asked 
the old man whether the ass were his own 
or no? He said, 'Yes/ * Troth, there's 
little sign on't/ says the other, 'by your 
loading him thus/ • Well,' says the old man 
to himself, ' and what am I to do now ? for 
I'm laughed at, if either the ass be empty, 
or if one of us rides, or both;' and so he 
came to the conclusion to bind the ass's 
legs together with a cord, and they tried to 
carry him to market with a pole upon their 
shoulders, betwixt them. This was sport to 
3 



34 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

everybody that saw it, inasmuch that the 
old man in great wrath threw down the ass 
into a river, and so went his way home 
again. The good man, in fine, was willing 
to please everybody, but had the ill fortune 
to please nobody, and lost his ass into the 
bargain." 

He who will not go to bed till he pleases 
everbody will have to sit up a great many 
nights. Many men, many minds; many 
women, many whims ; and so if we please 
one we are sure to set another grumbling. 
We had better wait till they are all of one 
mind before we mind them, or we shall be 
like the man who hunted many hares at once 
and caught none. Besides, the fancies of men 
alter, and folly is never long pleased with 
the same thing, but changes its palate, and 
grows sick of what it doted on. Will Shep- 
herd says he once tried to serve two masters, 
but, says he, " I soon had enough of it, and 
I declared that, if I was pardoned this once, 
the next time they caught me at it they 
might pickle me in salt and souse me in 
boiling vinegar." 

" He who would general favor win 
And not himself offend, 



THE OLD MAN AND HIS DONKEY. S5 

To-day the task he may begin, 
He'll never, never end." 

If we dance to every fiddle we shall soon be 
lame in both legs. Good nature may be a 
great misfortune if we do not mix prudence 
with it. 

He that all men would please 
Shall never find ease. 



It is right to be obliging, but we are not 
obliged to be every man's lackey. Put 
your hand quickly to your hat, for that is 
courtesy ; but don't bow your head at every 
man's bidding, for that is slavery. He who 
hopes to please all should first fit the moon 
with a suit of clothes, or fill a bottomless 
barrel with buckets with their hoops off. 
To live upon the praises of others is to feed 
on the air ; for what is praise but the breath 
of men's nostrils ? That's poor stuff to 
make a dinner of. To set traps for claps, 
and to faint if you don't get them, is a child- 
ish thing ; and to change your.coat to please 
new company is as mean as dirt. Change 
for the better as often as you like, but mind 
it is better before you change. Tom of 



36 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES, 

Bedlam never did a madder thing than he 
who tried to please a thousand masters at 
once : one is quite enough. If a man pleases 
God he may let the world wag its own way, 
and frown or flatter, as the maggot bites. 
What is there, after all, to frighten a man in 
a fool's grin, or in the frown of a poor 
mortal like yourself? If it mattered at all 
what the world says of us, it would be some 
comfort that when a good man is buried 
people say, " He was not a bad fellow after 
all." When the cow is dead we hear how 
much milk she gave. When the man's gone 
to heaven folks know their loss, and wonder 
how it was they did not treat him better. 

The way of pleasing men is hard, but 
blessed are they who please God. He is 
not a free man who is afraid to think for him- 
self, for if his thoughts are in bonds the 
man is not free. A man of God is a manly 
man. A true man does what he thinks to 
be right, whether the pigs grunt or the dogs 
howl. Are you afraid to follow out your 
conscience because Tom, Jack, and Harry, 
or Mary Ann and Betsy, would laugh at 
you ? Then you are not the seventy-fifth 
cousin to John Ploughman, who goes on 



THE OLD MAN AND HIS DONKEY. 37 

his way whistling merrily, though many 
find fault with himself, and his plough, and 
his horses, and his harness, and his boots, 
and his coat, and his waistcoat, and his hat, 
and his head, and every hair on it. John 
says it amuses them and doesn't hurt him ; 
but depend on it you will never catch John 
or his boys carrying the donkey. 



ALL ARE NOT HUNTERS THAT 
BLOW THE HORN. 




HE does not look much like a hunter ! 
Nimrod would never own him. 
But how he blows ! Goodness, gracious, 
what a row ! as the linnet said when he 

(38) 



A HORN-BL O WER, BUT NOT A HUNTER. 39 

heard a donkey singing his evening hymn. 
There's more goes to ploughing than know- 
ing how to whistle, and hunting is not all 
tally-ho and horn-blowing. Appearances 
are deceitful. Outward show is not every- 
thing. All are not butchers that carry a 
steel, and all are not bishops that wear 
aprons. You must not buy goods by the 
label ; for I have heard that the finer the 
trade-mark the worse the article. Never 
have we seen more horn or less hunter than 
in our picture. Blow away, my hearty, till 
your toes look out of your boots ; there's 
no fear of your killing either fox or stag ! 

Now, the more people blow, the more 
they may, but he is a fool who believes all 
they say. As a rule, the smallest boy car- 
ries the biggest fiddle, and he who makes 
most boast has least roast. He who has 
least wisdom has most vanity. John Lack- 
land is wonderfully fond of being called 
Esquire, and there's none so pleased at be- 
ing dubbed a doctor as the man who least 
deserves it. Many a D.D. is fiddle-dee-dee. 
I have heard say, " Always talk big and 
somebody will think you great," but my 
old friend Will Shepherd says, " Save your 



40 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

wind for running up a hill, and don't give 
us big words off a weak stomach. Look," 
said he once to me, " There's Solomon 
Braggs holding up his head like a hen 
drinking water, but there's nothing in it. 
With him it's much din and little done." 

" Of all speculations the market holds forth, 
The best that I know for a lover of pelf, 
Were to buy up this Braggs at the price he is worth, 
And sell him — at that which he sets on himself." 

Before honor is humility, but a prating 
fool shall fall, and when he falls very few 
will be in a hurry to pick him up. 

A long tongue generally goes with a 
short hand. We are most of us better at 
saying than doing. We can all tattle away 
from the battle, but many fly when the fight 
is nigh. Some are all sound and fury, and 
when they have bragged their brag all is 
over, and amen. The fat Dutchman was 
the wisest pilot in Flushing, only he never 
went to sea ; and the Irishman was the 
finest rider in Connaught, only he would 
never trust himself on a horse, because, as 
he said, " he generally fell off before he got 
on." A bachelor's wife is always well 
managed, and old maids always bring up 



A HORN-BLOWER, BUT NO TA HUNTER. 41 

their children in prime style. We think we 
can do what we are not called to, and if 
by chance the thing falls to our lot we do 
worse than those we blamed. Hence it is 
wise to be slow in foretelling what we will 
do, for — 

" Thus saith the proverb of the wise, 
' Who boasteth least tells fewest lies.' " 

There is another old rhyme which is as full 
of reason as a pod is full of peas, — 

" Little money is soonest spended ; 
Fewest words are soonest mended." 

Of course, every potter praises his own 
pot, and we can all toot a little on our own 
trumpet, but some blow as if nobody ever 
had a horn but themselves. "After me the 
flood," says the mighty big man, and 
whether it be so or no we have floods 
enough while he lives. I mean floods of 
words, words, words, enough to drown all 
your senses. O that the man had a mouth 
big enough to say all he has to say at one 
go, and have done with it ; but then one 
had need get to the other end of the world 
till his talk had run itself dry. O for a 
quiet hay-loft, or a saw-pit, or a dungeon, 



42 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

where the sound of the jawbone would no 
more be heard. They say a brain is worth 
little if you have not a tongue; but what is 
a tongue worth without a brain ? Bellow- 
ing is all very well, but the cow for me is 
that which fills the pail. A braying ass 
eats little hay, and that's a saving in fodder; 
but a barking dog catches no game, and 
that's a loss to the owner. Noise is no 
profit, and talk hinders work. 

When a man's song is in his praise, let 
the hymn be short metre, and let the tune 
be in the minor key. He who talks for ever 
about himself has a foolish subject, and is 
likely to worry and weary all around him. 
Good wine needs no bush, and a man who 
can do well seldom boasts about it. The 
emptiest tub makes the loudest noise. 
Those who give themselves out to be fine 
shots kill very few birds, and many a crack 
ploughman does a shorter day's work than 
plain John, though he is nothing off the 
common ; and so on the whole it is pretty 
clear that the best huntsmen are not those 
who are for everlastingly blowing the horn. 



A HANDSAW IS A GOOD THING, 
BUT NOT TO SHAVE WITH. 




OUR friend will cut more than he will 
eat, and shave off something more 
than hair, and then he will blame the saw. 
His brains don't lie in his beard, nor yet in 

(43) 



44 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

the skull above it, or he would see that his 
saw will only make sores. There's sense 
in choosing your tools, for a pig's tail will 
never make a good arrow, nor will his ear 
make a silk purse. You can't catch rabbits 
with drums, nor pigeons with plums. A 
good thing is not good out of its place. It 
is much the same with lads and girls; you 
can't put all boys to one trade, nor send 
all girls to the same service. One chap will 
make a London clerk, and another will do 
better to plough, and sow, and reap, and 
mow, and be a farmer's boy. It's no use 
forcing them ; a snail will never run a race, 
nor a mouse drive a wagon. 

" Send a boy to the well against his will, 
The pitcher will break and the water spill. " 

With unwilling hounds it is hard to hunt 
hares. To go against nature and inclina- 
tion is to row against wind and tide. They 
say you may praise a fool till you make him 
useful : I don't know so much about that, 
but I do know that if I get a bad knife 
I generally cut my finger, and a blunt axe 
is more trouble than profit. No, let me 
shave with a razor if I shave at all, and 



DON'T SHAVE WITH A HANDSAW. 45 

do my work with the best tools I can 
get. 

Never set a man to work he is not fit for, 
for he will never do it well. They say that 
if pigs fly they always go with their tails 
forward, and awkward workmen are much 
the same. Nobody expects cows to catch 
crows, or hens to wear hats. There's reason 
in roasting eggs, and there should be reason 
in choosing servants. Don't put a round 
peg into a square hole, nor wind up your 
watch with a cork-screw, nor set a tender- 
hearted man to whip wife-beaters, nor a 
bear to be a relieving-officer, nor a publican 
to judge of the licensing laws. Get the 
right man in the right place, and then all 
goes as smooth as skates on ice ; but the 
wrong man puts all awry, as the sow did 
when she folded the linen. 

It is a temptation to many to trust them 
with money ; don't put them to take care 
of it if you ever wish to see it again. Never 
set a cat to watch cream, nor a pig to gather 
peaches, for if the cream and the peaches 
go a-missing you v/ill have yourself to 
thank for it. It is a sin to put people 
where they are likely to sin. If you be- 



46 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

lieve the old saying, that when you set a 
beggar on horseback he will ride to the 
devil, don't let him have a horse of yours. 

If you want a thing well done do it your- 
self, and pick your tools. It is true that 
a man must row with such oars as he 
has, but he should not use the boat-hook 
for a paddle. Take not the tongs to poke 
the fire, nor the poker to put on the coals. 
A newspaper on Sunday is as much out 
of place as a warming-pan on the first 
of August, or a fan on a snowy day : the 
Bible suits the Sabbath a deal better. 

He who tries to make money by betting 
uses a wrong tool, and is sure to cut his 
fingers. As well hope to grow golden pip- 
pins on the bottom of the sea as to make 
gain among gamblers if you are an hon- 
est man. Hard work and thrifty habits 
are the right razor, gambling is a hand- 
saw. 

Some things want doing gently, and tell- 
ing a man of his faults is one of them. You 
would not fetch a hatchet to break open an 
egg, nor kill a fly on your boy's fore- 
head with a sledge-hammer, and so you 
must not try to mend your neighbor's 



DON'T SHAVE WITH A HANDSAW. 47 

little fault by blowing him up sky-high. 
Never fire off a musket to kill a midge, and 
don't raise a hue and cry about the half of 
nothing. 

Do not throw away a saw because it is 
not a razor, for it will serve your turn 
another day, and cut your ham-bone if it 
won't shave off your stubble. A whet- 
stone, though it cannot cut, may sharpen a 
knife that will. A match gives little light 
itself, but it may light a candle to brighten 
up the room. Use each thing and each 
man according to common sense and you 
will be uncommonly sensible. You don't 
milk horses nor ride cows, and by the 
same rule you must make of every man 
what he is meant for, and the farm will be 
as right as a trivet. 

Everything has its use, but no one thing 
is good for all purposes. The baby said, 
" The cat crew and the cock rocked the 
cradle," but old folks knew better : the 
cat is the best at mousing and the cock at 
rousing. That's for that, as salt is for her- 
rings, and sugar for gooseberries, and Nan 
for Nicholas. Don't choose your tools by 
their looks, for that's best which does best. 



48 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

A silver trowel lays very few bricks. You 
cannot curry a horse with a tortoise-shell 
comb, or fell oaks with a pen-knife, or 
open oysters with a gold tooth-pick. Fine 
is not so good as fit when work is to be 
done. A good workman will get on pretty 
well with a poor tool, and a brave soldier 
never lacks a weapon : still, the best is 
good enough for me, and John Plough- 
man does not care to use a clumsy tool 
because it looks pretty. Better ride on an 
ass that carries you than on a steed which 
throws you; it is far better to work with 
an old-fashioned spade which suits your 
hand than with a new-fangled invention you 
don't understand. 

In trying to do good to your fellow-men 
the gospel is out of sight the best instru- 
ment to work with. The new doctrine which 
they call " modern thought " is nothing bet- 
ter than a handsaw, and it won't work a bit. 
This fine new nothing of a gospel would not 
save a mouse, nor move the soul of a tom- 
tit ; but the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ 
is suited to man's need, and by God's grace 
does its work famously. Let every preacher 
and teacher keep to it, for they will never 



DON'T SHAVE WITH A HANDSAW. 49 

find a better. Try to win men with its lov- 
ing words and precious promises, and there's 
no fear of labor in vain. Some praise the 
balm of Gilead, or man's morality; many 
try the Roman salve, or the oil of Baby- 
lon ; and others use a cunning ointment 
mixed by learned philosophers ; but for his 
own soul's wounds, and for the hurts of 
others, John Ploughman knows but one 
cure, and that is given gratis by the good 
Physician to all who ask for it. A humble 
faith in Christ Jesus will soon bring you 
this sovereign remedy. Use no other, for 
no other is of use. 



DON'T CUT OFF YOUR NOSE TO 
SPITE YOUR FACE. 



ANGER is a short madness. The less 
we do when we go mad the better for 
everybody, and the less we go mad the 
better for ourselves. He is far gone who 
(50) 



DON'T CUT OFF YOUR NOSE. 51 

hurts himself to wreak his vengeance on 
others. The old saying is " Don't cut off 
your head because it aches," and another 
says " Set not your house on fire to spite 
the moon." If things go awry, it is a poor 
way of mending to make them worse, as the 
man did who took to drinking because he 
could not marry the girl he liked. He 
must be a fool who cuts off his nose to spite 
his face, and yet this is what Dick did 
when he had vexed his old master, and be- 
cause he was chid must needs give up his 
place, throw himself out of work, and 
starve his wife and family. Jane had been 
idle, and she knew it, but sooner than let 
her mistress speak to her, she gave warn- 
ing, and lost as good a service as a maid 
could wish for. Old Griggs was wrong, 
and could not deny it, and yet because the 
parson's sermon fitted him rather close, he 
took the sulks and vowed he would never 
hear the good man again. It was his own 
loss, but he wouldn't listen to reason, but 
was as wilful as a pig. 

Do nothing when you are out of temper, 
and then you will have less to undo. Let 
a hasty man's passion be a warning to you ; 



52 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

if he scalds you, take heed that you do not 
let your own pot boil over. Many a man 
has given himself a box on the ear in his 
blind rage, ay, and ended his own life out 
of spite. He who cannot curb his temper 
carries gunpowder in his bosom, and he is 
neither safe for himself nor his neighbors. 
When passion comes in at the door, what 
little sense there is indoors flies out at the 
window. By-and-by a hasty man cools 
and comes to himself, like MacGibbon's 
gruel when he put it out of the window, 
but if his nose is off in the meantime, who 
is to put it on again ? He will only be 
sorry once and that will be all the rest of 
his life. Anger does a man more hurt than 
that which made him angry. It opens his 
mouth and shuts his eyes, and fires his 
heart, and drowns his sense, and makes his 
wisdom folly. Old Tompkins told me that 
he was sorry that he lost his temper, and 
I could not help thinking that the pity 
was that he ever found it again, for it was 
like an old shoe with the sole gone and the 
upper leathers worn out, only fit for a dung- 
hill. A hot-tempered man would be all the 
better for a new heart, and a right spirit. 



DON'T CUT OFF YOUR NOSE. 53 

Anger is a fire which cooks no victuals, and 
comforts no household : it cuts and curses 
and kills, and no one knows what it may- 
lead to ; therefore, good reader, don't let it 
lodge in your bosom, and if it ever comes 
there, pass the vagrant on to the next parish. 

Gently, gently, little pot, 

Why so hasty to be hot ? 

Over you will surely boil, 

And I know not what you'll spoil. 

The old gent in our picture has a fine 
nose of his own, and though he will be a 
fool to cut it off, he would be wise to cut 
off the supplies which have made it such a 
size. That glass and jug on the table are 
the paint-pots that he colors his nose with, 
and everbody knows, whether he knows it 
or knows it not, that his nose is the out- 
ward and visible sign of a good deal of in- 
ward and spirituous drink, and the sooner he 
drops his drops the better. So here we 
will cut off, not our nose, but the present 
subject. 



HE HAS A HOLE UNDER HIS NOSE 
AND HIS MONEY RUNS INTO IT. 




THIS is the man who is always dry, be- 
cause he takes so much heavy wet. 
He is a loose fellow who is fond of getting 
tight. He is no sooner up than his nose is 
(54) 



THE HOLE UNDER THE NOSE. 55 

in the cup, and his money begins to run 
down the hole which is just under his nose. 
He is not a blacksmith, but he has a spark 
in his throat, and all the publican's barrels 
can't put it out. If a pot of beer is a yard 
of land, he must have swallowed more 
acres than a ploughman could get over for 
many a day, and still he goes on swallow- 
ing until he takes to wallowing. All goes 
down Gutter Lane. Like the snipe, he 
lives by suction. If you ask him how he 
is, he says he would be quite right if he 
could moisten his mouth. His purse is a 
bottle, his bank is the publican's till, and his 
casket is a cask : pewter is his precious 
metal, and his pearl* is a mixture of gin 
and beer. The dew of his youth comes 
from Ben Nevis, and the comfort of his 
soul is cordial gin. He is a walking barrel, 
a living drain-pipe, a moving swill-tub. 
They say " loth to drink and loth to leave 
off," but he never needs persuading to begin, 
and as to ending — that is out of the ques- 
tion while he can borrow two-pence. This 
is the gentleman who sings — 

* Purl. 



56 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

He that buys land buys many stones, 
He that buys meat buys many bones, 
He that buys eggs buys many shells, 
He that buys good ale buys nothing else. 

He will never be hanged for leaving his 
drink behind him. He drinks in season 
and out of season : in summer because he 
is hot, and in winter because he is cold. 
A drop of beer never comes too soon, and 
he w r ould get up in the middle of the night 
for more, only he goes to bed too tipsy. 
He has heard that if you get wet-footed a 
glass of whisky in your boots will keep 
you from catching cold, and he argues that 
the best way to get one glass of the spirit 
into each boot is to put two doses where it 
will run into your legs. He is never long 
without an excuse for another pot, or if per- 
chance he does not make one, another lush- 
ington helps him. 

Some drink when friends step in, 
And some when they step out ; 
Some drink because they're thin, 
And some because they're stout. 

Some drink because 'tis wet, 
And some because 'tis dry; 
Some drink another glass 
To wet the other eye. 



THE HOLE UNDER THE NOSE. 57 

Water is this gentleman's abhorrence, 
whether used inside or out, but most of all 
he dreads it taken inwardly, except with 
spirits, and then the less the better. He says 
that the pump would kill him, but he never 
gives it a chance. He laps his liquor, and 
licks his chaps, but he will never die through 
the badness of the water from the well. It 
is a pity that he does not run the risk. 
Drinking cold water neither makes a man 
sick, nor in debt, nor his wife a widow, but 
this mighty fine ale of his will do all this 
for him, make him worse than a beast while 
he lives, and wash him away to his grave 
before his time. The old Scotchman said, 
" Death and drink-draining are near neigh- 
bors," and he spoke the truth. They say 
that drunkenness makes some men fools, 
some beasts, and some devils, but according 
to my mind it makes all men fools whatever 
else it does. Yet when a man is as drunk 
as a rat he sets up to be a judge, and mocks 
at sober people. Certain neighbors of mine 
laugh at me for being a teetotaller, and I 
might well laugh at them for being drunk, 
only I feel more inclined to cry that they 
should be such fools. O that we could get 



58 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

them sober, and then perhaps we might 
make men of them. You cannot do much 
with these fellows, unless you can enlist 
them in the Coldstream guards. 

He that any good would win 
At his mouth must first begin. 

As long as drink drowns conscience and 
reason, you might as well talk to the hogs. 
The rascals will promise fair and take the 
pledge, and then take their coats to pledge 
to get more beer. We smile at a tipsy man, 
for he is a ridiculous creature, but when we 
see how he is ruined body and soul it is no 
joking matter. How solemn is the truth 
that " No drunkard shall inherit eternal life." 
There's nothing too bad for a man to say 
or do when he is half-seas over. It is a 
pity that any decent body should go near 
such a common sewer. If he does not fall 
into the worst of crimes it certainly is not 
his fault, for he has made himself ready for 
anything the devil likes to put into his mind. 
He does least hurt when he begins to be 
topheavy, and to reel about: then he be- 
comes a blind man with good eyes in his 
head, and a cripple with legs on. He sees 



THE HOLE UNDER THE NOSE. 59 

two moons, and two doors to the public- 
house, and tries to find his way through 
both the doors at once. Over he goes, and 
there he must lie unless somebody will 
wheel him home in a barrow or carry him 
to the police-station. 

Solomon says the glutton and the drunk- 
ard shall come to poverty, and that the 
drinker does in no time. He gets more 
and more down at the heel, and as his nose 
gets redder and his body is more swollen 
he gets to be more of a shack and more of 
a shark. His trade is gone, and his credit 
has run out, but he still manages to get his 
beer. He treats an old friend to a pot, and 
then finds that he has left his purse at home, 
and of course the old friend must pay the 
shot. He borrows till no one will lend him 
a groat, unless it is to get off lending a 
shilling. Shame has long since left him, 
though all who know him are ashamed of 
him. His talk runs like the tap, and is full 
of stale dregs : he is very kind over his 
beer, and swears he loves you, and would 
like to drink your health, and love you 
again. Poor sot, much good will his bless- 
ing do to any one who gets it; his poor 



60 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

wife and family have had too much of it 
already, and quake at the very sound of his 
voice. 

Now, if we try to do anything to shut up 
a boozing-house, or shorten the hours for 
guzzling, we are called all sorts of bad 
names, and the wind-up of it all is — "What! 
Rob a poor man of his beer? " The fact is 
that they rob the poor man by his beer. 
The ale-jug robs the cupboard and the table, 
starves the wife and strips the children ; it 
is a great thief, housebreaker, and heart- 
breaker, and the best possible thing is to 
break it to pieces, or keep it on the shelf 
bottom upwards. In a newspaper which 
was lent me the other day I saw some verses 
by John Barleycorn, jun., and as they tickled 
my fancy I copied them out, and here they 
are. 



What ! rob a poor man of his beer, 
And give him good victuals instead ! 

Your heart's very hard, sir, I fear, 
Or at least you are soft in the head. 

What ! rob a poor man of his mug, 
And give him a house of his own ; 

With kitchen and parlor so snug ! 

'Tis enough to draw tears from a stone. 



THE HOLE UNDER THE NOSE. 61 

What ! rob a poor man of his glass, 
And teach him to read and to write ! 

What ! save him from being an ass ! 
5 Tis nothing but malice and spite. 

What ! rob a poor man of his ale, 

And prevent him from beating his wife, 

From being locked up in a jail, 
With penal employment for life! 

What ! rob a poor man of his beer, 
And keep him from starving his child ! 

It makes one feel awfully queer, 

And I'll thank you to draw it more mild. 

Having given you a song, I now hand 
you a handbill to stick up in the " Rose and 
Crown " window, if the landlord wants an 
advertisement. It was written many years 
ago, but it is quite as good as new. Any 
beer-seller may print it who thinks it likely 
to help his trade — 



DRUNKARDS, READ THIS! 



DRUNKENNESS 

EXPELS REASON, 

DISTEMPERS THE BODY, 

DIMINISHES STRENGTH, 
INFLAMES THE BLOOD; 
INTERNAL 1 



ES j E ™ R NAL WOUNDS; 
I INCURABLE I 



A WITCH TO THE SENSES, 

A DEMON TO THE SOUL, 

A THIEF TO THE PURSE, 

A GUIDE TO BEGGARY, LECHERY, & VILLAINY. 

IT IS 

THE WIFE'S WOE, and 
THE CHILDREN'S SORROW. 

MAKES A MAN 

WALLOW WORSE THAN A BEAST, and 
ACT LIKE A FOOL. 



HE IS 

A SELF-MURDERER; 
WHO DRINKS TO ANOTHER'S GOOD HEALTH, 

AND 

ROBS HIMSELF OF HIS OWN. 



(62) 



EVERY MAN SHOULD SWEEP BE- 
FORE HIS OWN DOOR. 




HE is a wise man who has wit enough 
for his own affairs. It is a common 
thing for people to mind Number One, but 
not so common to see people mend it 

(63) 



64 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

When it comes to spending money on 
labor or improvements, they think that re- 
pairs should begin at Number Two, and 
Number Three, and go on till all the houses 
up to Number Fifty are touched up before 
any hint should be given to Number One. 
Now, this is very stupid, for if charity 
should begin at home, certainly reformation 
should begin there too. It is a waste of 
time to go far away to make a clearance, 
there's nothing like sweeping the snow 
from your own door. Let every dog carry 
his own tail. Mind your own business, and 
mend your own manners, and if every man 
does the same all will be minded and mend- 
ed, as the old song says : 

" Should every man defend his house, 
Then all would be defended ; 
If every man would mend a man, 
Then all mankind were mended. " 

A man who does not look well to his own 
concerns is not fit to be trusted with other 
people's. Lots of folks are so busy abroad 
that they have no time to look at home. 
They say the cobbler's wife goes barefoot, 
and the baker's child gets no buns, and the 



SWEEP BEFORE YOUR OWN DOOR, 65 

sweep's house has sooty chimneys. This 
comes of a man's thinking that he is every- 
body except himself. All the wit in the 
world is not in one head, and therefore the 
wisest man living is not bound to look 
after all his neighbors' matters. There are 
wonderful people about whose wisdom 
would beat Solomon into fits ; and yet they 
have not sense enough to keep their own ket- 
tle from boiling over. They could manage 
the nation, and yet can't keep their boys out 
of the farmer's orchard ; they could teach the 
parson, but they can't learn themselves. 
They poke their noses into other people's 
concerns, where they are as welcome as 
water in one's shoes, but as for setting 
their own house to rights, they like the job 
about as much as a pig likes having a ring 
put in his nose. The meddlesome man 
will not begin to darn his own stockings 
because he has left his needle sticking in 
his cousin's socks : he will be as grey as 
grannum's cat before he improves, and yet 
he struts like a crow in a gutter, and thinks 
himself cock of the walk. 

A man's own selfishness and conceit 



66 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

ought to make him see to his own ways if 
nothing else does. 

There's but one wise man in the world, 

And who d'ye think it be ? 
'Tis this man, that man, t'other man, 

Every man think's 'tis he. 

Now, if this be so, why does not this wise 
man do the wise thing and set his own wise 
self in the way of growing wiser ? Every 
cat cleans its own fur, and licks its own kit- 
tens : when will men and women mind 
their own minds, and busy themselves with 
their own business ? Boil your own pota- 
toes, and let me roast mine if I like ; I won't 
do it with your firing. " Every man to his 
tent " was the old cry in Israel, and it's not a 
bad one for England, only Nelson gave us a 
better — 

ENGLAND EXPECTS EVERY MAN TO DO HIS 
DUTY. 



SCANT FEEDING OF MAN OR 

HORSE IS SMALL PROFIT AND 

SURE LOSS. 




WHAT is saved out of the food of 
cattle is a dead loss, for a horse can't 
work if he is not fed. If an animal won't 

(67) 



68 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

pay for keeping he won't pay for starving. 
Even the land yields little if it is not nour- 
ished, and it is just the same with the poor 
beast. You might as well try to run a steam- 
engine without coals, or drive a water-mill 
without water, as work a horse without put- 
ting corn into him. Thomas Tusser, who 
wrote a book upon " Husbandry " in the 
olden time, said, 

u Who starveth his cattle, and weareth them out 
By carting and ploughing, his gain I much doubt ; 
But he that in labor doth use them aright 
Has gain to his comfort, and cattle in plight." 

Poor dumb animals cannot speak for them- 
selves, and therefore every one who has his 
speech should plead for them. To keep 
them short of victuals is a crying shame. 
The one in our picture seems to be thoroughly 
broken in : look at his knees ! His owner 
ought to be flogged at the cart tail. I hate 
cruelty, and above all things the cruelty 
which starves the laboring beast. 

A right good man is good to all, 
And stints not table, rack, or stall ; 
Not only cares for horse and hog, 
But kindly thinks of cat and dog. 



DULY FEED MAN AND STEED. 69 

Is not a man better than a beast ? Then, 
depend upon it, what is good for the 
ploughing horse is good for the ploughing 
boy : a belly full of plain food is a wonder- 
ful help to a laboring man. A starving 
workman is a dear servant. If you don't 
pay your men, they pay themselves, or else 
they shirk their work. He who labors well 
should be fed well, especially a ploughman. 

" Let such have enow 
That follow the plough." 

There would be no bread if it were not for 
the ploughman : would you starve the man 
who is the very bottom and beginning of 
everything ? John never brags, but he thinks 
well of his calling, and thinks well of those 
who pay well : as for those who grind the 
faces of the poor, the more John thinks of 
them the less he thinks of them. A man 
may live upon little, but Farmer Gripper 
thinks we can live upon nothing, which is a 
horse of another color. I can't make out 
why the land cannot afford to keep those 
who work on it, for it used to do so. Tom 
Tusser wrote three hundred years ago, 



70 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

" Good ploughmen look weekly, of custom and right, 
For roast meat on Sundays, and Thursdays at night. 
Thus doing and keeping such custom and guise, 
They call thee good huswife, they love thee likewise." 

This is what he writes to the farmer's wife 
about the ploughmen who lived at the farm 
house, but he has a bit to say for the other 
fellows and their privileges. About the 
harvest supper he says, 

" In harvest time, harvest folk, servants, and all, 
Should make all together good cheer in the hall." 

I wish they would, but then they are so apt 
to drink. Could we not have a feast with- 
out the beer and the headaches ? This is 
old Tom's writing about the harvest supper, 
and so on, — 

II For all this good feasting, yet art thou not loose, 
Till ploughman thou givest his harvest home goose. 
Though goose go in stubble, I pass not for that, 
Let Giles have a goose, be she lean, be she fat." 

I fancy I see old Gripper giving Giles a 
goose : he would think Giles a green goose 
if he were to hint at it. Gripper is a close 
shaver ; where he grazes no goose could 
pick up a living after him. He does not 



DULY FEED MAN AND STEED. 71, 

know what his lean laborers say of him, 
but he might guess, for a hungry man is an 
angry man, and an empty belly makes no 
compliments. As for lazy fellows who will 
eat till they sweat and work till they freeze, 
I don't mind what short commons they get ; 
but a real hard-working man ought to be 
able to get for a day's work enough to keep 
himself and family from hunger. If this 
cannot be done, something is wrong some- 
where, as the man said when he sat down 
on a setting of eggs. I am not going to 
blame the farmers, or the landlords, or the 
Parliament men, or anybody ; but the land 
is good, and yields plenty for man and 
beast, and neither horse nor man should be 
starved. 

There is no gain in being niggardly to 
your cattle. I have known men buy old 
screws of horses and feed them badly, and 
yet pay more in the long run for ploughing 
than the owner of a good team who gave 
out a fair allowance. The poor things can't 
work if they don't eat. As I said before, I 
speak up for the horses because they can't 
speak for themselves. All they can say, 
however, goes to prove what I have written : 



72 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

ask them if they can plough well when they 
get bad corn, and little of it, and they an- 
swer with a neigh. 

As for the men, I wish they were, all round, 
a more deserving set, but I am obliged to 
own that a many are better at grubbing than 
ploughing. I would say to them, " Do 
good work, and then ask for good wages." 
I am afraid that many are not worth more 
than they get. Our old master used to say 
to Crawley Jones — 

" You feed so fast, and walk so very slow — 
Eat with your legs, and with your grinders go." 

But then, if Jones was a slow man, he 
certainly had slow pay. He did not seethe 
fun of working to the tune of twenty shill- 
ings when he had only ten. If he had done 
more, master would have given him more, 
but Jones couldn't see that, and so he 
mouched about, doing next to nothing, and 
got next to nothing for it. He very seldom 
got a bit of meat, and there was no bone or 
muscle in the man. He seemed to be fed 
on turnip-tops, and was as dull as a dor- 
mouse in winter time, and unless you had 
emptied a skip of bees over him you couldn't 



DULY FEED MAN AND STEED. 73 

have woke him up. They say that Johnny 
Raw is a stupid ; he would not be half so 
stupid if he had more raw to put in his pot. 

Though lubbers might loiter with belly too full, 
We're not in that case, but our belts we must pull; 
Could we manage to get a little more meat, 
We could do twice as much, and think it no feat. 

They call a ploughman Chaw-bacon, do 
they ? Wouldn't he like a bit more bacon 
to chaw? Hundreds and thousands of 
hard-working men down in the shires 
hardly get enough fat to grease the wheels 
of life, and the more's the pity. As to the 
poor women and children, it is often short- 
cake with them : bread, and pull it, and 
little of that. 

One thing, however, is as plain as a pike- 
staff; the laborer cannot afford to keep a 
public house going while he has so little for 
his own private house. He has not a penny 
to spare, I'm sure, but had need to take all 
home to the missus that he can make by 
hook or by crook. Miss Hannah More 
wrote two verses which every ploughman 
should read, and mark, and learn. 



74 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

" We say the times are grevious hard, 
And hard they are, 'tis true ! 
But, drinkers, to your wives and babes 
They're harder made by you. 

" The drunkard's tax is self-imposed, 
Like every other sin ; 
The taxes altogether cost 
Not half so much as gin." 

Well, if after all our being sober and 
thrifty, we cannot get along without pinch- 
ing, let us still be patient and contented. 
We have more blessings than we can count 
even now. If masters happen to be close- 
fisted, God is open-handed, and if the out- 
ward food be scant, the bread of heaven is 
plentiful. Cheer up, brother ploughman, it's 
better on before. There is a city where " the 
very streets are paved with gold exceeding 
clear and fine." This should make us feel 
like singing all the time, and help us to 
follow the advice of old Thomas — 

" At bed, and at board, whatsoever befall, 
Whatever God sendeth, be merry withal." 



NEVER STOP THE PLOUGH TO 
CATCH A MOUSE. 




mMw^^^^ 



THERE'S not much profit in this game. 
Think of a man and a boy and four 
horses all standing still for the sake of a 
mouse ! What would old friend Tusser say 

(75) 



76 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

to that ? I think he would rhyme in this 
fashion — 

A ploughman deserveth a cut of the whip, 
If for idle pretence he let the hours slip. 

Heaps of people act like the man in our 
picture. They have a great work in hand 
which wants all their wits, and they leave 
it to squabble over some pretty nothing, not 
worth a fig. Old master Tom would say 
to them — 

No more tittle tattle, go on with your cattle. 

He could not bear for a farmer to let his 
horses out for carting even, because it took 
their work away from the farm, and so I 
am sure he would be in a great stew if he 
saw farmers wasting their time at matches, 
and hunts, and the like. He says — 

" Who slacketh his tillage a carter to be, 
For groat got abroad, at home shall lose three; 
For sure by so doing he brings out of heart, 
Both land for the corn, and horse for the cart." 

The main chance must be minded, and the 
little things must be borne with. Nobody 
would burn his house down to kill the 



MO USE- cA TCHING. 77 

blackbeetles, and it would never answer to 
kill the bullocks to feed the cats. If our 
baker left off making bread for a week while 
he cracked the cockroaches, what should 
we all do for breakfast ? If the butcher 
sold no more meat till he had killed all the 
blow-flies, we should be many a day with- 
out mutton. If the water companies never 
gave the Londoners a drink till they had 
fished every gudgeon out of the Thames, 
how would the old ladies make their tea? 
There's no use in stopping your fishing be- 
cause of the sea-weed, nor your riding be- 
cause of the dust. 

Now, our minister said to me the other 
day, "John, if you were on the committees 
of some of our societies you would see this 
mouse-hunting done to perfection. Not only 
committees, but whole bodies of Christian 
people, go mouse-hunting." Well, said I, 
minister, just write me a bit, and I will stick 
it in my book, it will be beef to my horse- 
radish. Here's his writing — 

" A society of good Christian people will 
split into pieces over a petty quarrel, or 
mere matter of opinion, while all around 
them the masses are perishing for want of 



78 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

the gospel. A miserable little mouse, 
which no cat would ever hunt, takes them 
off from their Lord's work. Again, intelli- 
gent men will spend months of time and 
heaps of money in inventing and publishing 
mere speculations, while the great field of 
the world lies unploughed. They seem to 
care nothing how many may perish so long 
as they can ride their hobbies. In other 
matters a little common sense is allowed 
to rule, but in the weightiest matters fool- 
ishness is sadly conspicuous. As for you 
and me, John, let us kill a mouse when it 
nibbles our bread, but let us not spend our 
lives over it. What can be done by a 
mousetrap or a cat should not occupy all 
our thoughts. 

The paltry trifles of this world are much 
of the same sort. Let us give our chief at- 
tention to the chief things, — the glory of 
God, the winning of souls for Jesus, and 
our own salvation. There are fools enough 
in the world, and there can be no need that 
Christian men should swell the number. 
Go on with your ploughing, John, and I 
will go on with my preaching, and in due 
season we shall reap if we faint not." 



A LOOKING GLASS IS OF NO USE 
TO A BLIND MAN. 




HE who will not see is much the same 
as if he had no eyes; indeed, in 
some things, the man without eyes has the 
advantage, for he is in the dark and knows 

(79) 



80 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

it. A lantern is of no use to a bat, and 
good teaching is lost on the man who will 
not learn. Reason is folly with the un- 
reasonable. One man can lead a horse to 
the water, but a hundred cannot make him 
drink : it is easy work to tell a man the 
truth, but if he will not be convinced your 
labor is lost. We pity the poor blind, we 
cannot do so much as that for those who 
shut their eyes against the light. 

A man who is blind to his own faults is 
blind to his own interests. He who thinks 
that he never was a fool is a fool now. He 
who never owns that he is wrong will never 
get right. He'll mend, as the saying is, 
when he grows better, like sour beer in sum- 
mer. How can a man take the smuts off 
his face if he will not look in the glass, nor 
believe that they are there when he is told 
of them ? 

Prejudice shuts up many eyes in total 
darkness. The man knows already : he is 
positive and can swear to it, and it's no use 
your arguing. He has made up his mind, 
and it did not take him long, for there's very 
little of it, but when he has said a thing he 
sticks to it like cobbler's wax. He is 



THE BLIND NEED NO MIRRORS. 81 

wiser than seven men that can render a 
reason. He is as positive as if he had been 
on the other side the curtain and looked into 
the back yard of the universe. He talks 
as if he carried all knowledge in his waist- 
coat pocket, like a peppermint lozenge. 
Those who like may try to teach him, but 
I don't care to hold up a mirror to a mole. 

Some men are blinded by their worldly 
business, and could not see heaven itself if 
the windows were open over their heads. 
Look at farmer Grab, he is like Nebuchad- 
nezzar, for his conversation is all among 
beasts, and if he does not eat grass it is be- 
cause he never could stomach salads. His 
dinner is his best devotion, he is a terrible 
fastener on a piece of beef, and sweats at it 
more than at his labor. As old Master 
Earle says, " His religion is a part of his 
copyhold, which he takes from his landlord, 
and refers wholly to his lordship's discretion. 
If he gives him leave, he goes to church in 
his best clothes, and sits there with his 
neighbors, but never prays more than two 
prayers — for rain and for fair weather, as 
the case may be. He is a niggard all 
the week, except on market days, where, if 
6 



82 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

his corn sell well, he thinks he may be 
drunk with a good conscience. He is sensi- 
ble of no calamity but the burning of a stack 
of corn, or the overflowing of a meadow, 
and he thinks Noah's flood the greatest 
plague that ever was, not because it 
drowned the world, but spoiled the grass. 
For death he is never troubled, and if he 
gets in his harvest before it happens, it may 
come when it will, he cares not." He is as 
stubborn as he is stupid, and to get a new 
thought into his head you would need 
to bore a hole in his skull with a centre- 
bit. The game would not be worth the 
candle. We must leave him alone, for he is 
too old in the tooth, and too blind to be 
made to see. 

Other people hurt their eyes by using 
glasses which are not spectacles. I have 
tried to convince Joe Scroggs that it would 
be a fine thing for him to join the teetotalers, 
and he has nothing to say against it only 
" he does not see it." 



" He up and told me to my face, 
The chimney corner should be his place, 
And there he'd sit and dye his face, 
And drink till all is blue." 



THE BLIND NEED NO MIRRORS. 83 

All is blue with him now, for his furniture 
is nearly all sold, and his wife and children 
have not a shoe to their foot, and yet he 
laughs about " a yard of pump water," and 
tells me to go and drink my cocoa. Poor 
soul ! Poor soul ! 

In tippling is his sole delight, 
Each sign-post bars his way ; 

He spends in muddy ale at night 
The wages of the day. 

Can nothing be done for such poor fools. 
Why not shorten the hours for dealing out 
the drink ? Why not shut up the public- 
houses on Sundays ? If these people have 
not got sense enough to take care of them- 
selves the law should protect them. Will 
Shepherd says he has to fetch his sheep out 
of a field when they are likely to get blown 
through eating too much green meat, and 
there ought to be power to fetch sots out of 
a beer-shop when they are worse than 
blowed through drink. How I wish I 
could make poor Scroggs see as I do, but 
there, if a fellow has no eyes he can't see the 
sun, though his nose is being scorched off in 
the glare of it. 



84 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

Of all dust the worst for the eyes is gold 
dust. A bribe blinds the judgment, and 
riches darken the mind. As smoke to the 
eyes, so also is flattery to the soul, and 
prejudice turns the light of the sun into a 
darkness that may be felt. We are all 
blind by nature, and till the good Physician 
opens our eyes we grope, even in gospel 
light. All the preaching in the world can- 
not make a man see the truth so long as his 
eyes are blinded. There is a heavenly eye- 
salve which is a sovereign cure, but the 
worst of the matter is that the blind in 
heart think they see already, and so they 
are likely to die in darkness. Let us pray 
for those who never pray for themselves : 
God's power can do for them what is far 
beyond our power. 

A dark and blinded thing is man, 

Yet full of fancied light ! 
But all his penetration can 

Obtain no gospel light. 

Though heavenly truth may blaze abroad, 

He cannot see at all ; 
Though gospel leaders show the road, 

He still gropes for the wall. 



THE BLIND NEED NO MIRRORS. 85 

Perhaps he stands to hear the sound, 

But blind he still remains, 
No meaning in the word is found 

To cause him joys or pains. 

O Lord, thy holy power display, 

For thou the help must find; 
Pour in the light of gospel day, 

Illuminate the blind. 

Behold, how unconcerned they dwell 

Though reft of sight they be, 
They fancy they can see right well, 

And need no help from thee. 

Speak, and they'll mourn their blinded eyes, 

And cry to thee for light ; 
O Lord, do not our prayer despise, 

But give these blind men sight. 



HE HAS GOT THE FIDDLE, BUT 
NOT THE STICK. 




IT often comes to pass that a man steps 
into another's shoes, and yet cannot 
walk in them. A poor tool of a parson gets 
into a good man's pulpit, and takes the 

(86) 



GOT THE FIDDLE, NOT THE STICK. S? 

same texts, but the sermons are chalk, and 
not cheese. A half-baked young swell in- 
herits his father's money, but not his gen- 
erosity, his barns, but not his brains, his 
title, but not his sense, — he has the fiddle 
without the stick, and the more's the pity. 
Some people imagine that they have only 
to get hold of the plough-handles, and they 
would soon beat John Ploughman. If they 
had his fiddle they are sure they could play 
on it. J. P. presents his compliments, and 
wishes he may be there when it is done. 

" That I fain would see, 
Quoth blind George of Hollowee." 

However, between you and me and the bed- 
post, there is one secret which John does 
not mind letting out. John's fiddle is poor 
enough, but the stick is a right good one, 
too good to be called a fiddle-stick. Do 
you want to see the stick with which John 
plays his fiddle ? Here it is — Looking to 
God for help, John always tries to do his 
best, whatever he has to do, and he has 
found this to be the very best way to play 
all kinds of tunes. What little music there 
is in John's poor old fiddle comes out 



S8 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES, 

of it in that way. Listen to a scrape or 
two. 

If I were a cobbler, I'd make it my pride 

The best of all cobblers to be ; 
If I were a tinker, no tinker beside 

Should mend an old kettle like me. 

And being a ploughman, I plough with the best, 
No furrow runs straighter than mine ; 

I waste not a moment, and stay not to rest, 
Though idlers to tempt me combine. 

Yet I wish not to boast, for trust I have none 

In aught I can do or can be ; 
I rest in my Saviour, and what he has done 

To ransom poor sinners like me. 



" GREAT CRY AND LITTLE WOOL," 

AS THE MAN SAID WHO CLIPPED 

THE SOW. 




OUR friend Hodge does not seem to be 
making much of an out at shearing. 
It will take him all his time to get wool 

(89) 



90 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

enough for a blanket, and his neighbors are 
telling him so, but he does not heed them, 
for a man never listens to reason when he 
has made up his mind to act unreasonably. 
Hodge gets plenty of music of a sort : 
Hullah's system is nothing to it, and even 
Nebuchadnezzar's flutes, harps, sackbuts, 
and dulcimers could not make more din. 
He gets " cry " enough to stock a Babylon 
of babies, but not wool enough to stop his 
ears with. 

Now, is not this very like the world with 
its notions of pleasure ? There is noise 
enough ; laughter and shouting, and boast- 
ing ; but where is the comfort which can 
warm the heart and give peace to the 
spirit? Generally there's plenty of smoke 
and very little fire in what is called pleasure. 
It promises a nag and gives an egg. Gaiety 
is a sort of flash in the pan, a fifth of No- 
vember squib, all fizz and bang and done 
for. The devil's meal is all bran, and the 
world's wine turns to vinegar. It is al- 
ways making a great noise over nutshells. 
Thousands have had to weep over their 
blunders in looking for their heaven on 
earth ; but they follow each other like sheep 



GREAT CRY AND LITTLE WOOL. 91 

through a gap, not a bit the wiser for the 
experience of generations. It seems that 
every man must have a clip at his own par- 
ticular pig, and cannot be made to believe 
that like all the rest it will yield him noth- 
ing but bristles. Men are not all of one 
mind as to what is best for them ; they no 
more agree than the clocks in our village, 
but they all hang together in following 
after vanity, for to the core of their hearts 
they are vain. 

One shears the publican's hog, which is 
so fond of the swill tub, and he reckons 
upon bringing home a wonderful lot of 
wool ; but everybody knows that he who 
goes to the " Woolpack " for wool will come 
home shorn: the "Blue Boar" is an un- 
commonly ugly animal to shear, and so is 
the " Red Lion." Better sheer off as fast 
as you can ; it will be sheer folly to stop. 
You may loaf about the tap of the " Half- 
moon " till you get the full moon in your 
noddle, and need a keeper : it is the place 
for men whose wits go woolgathering, but 
wool there is none. 

Another is covetous, and hopes to escape 
misery by being a miser : his greedy mind 



92 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

can no more be filled than a lawyer's purse : 
he never has enough, and so he never has 
a feast. He makes money with his teeth, 
by keeping them idle. That is a very lean 
hog to clip at, for poverty wants some 
things, luxury many things, but covetous- 
ness wants all things. If we could hoard 
up all the money in the world, what would 
it be to us at last ? To-day at good cheer, 
to-morrow on the bier : in the midst of life 
we are in death. 

Some, like old Mrs. Too-good, go in for 
self-righteousness, and their own mouths 
dub them saints. They are the pink of per- 
fection, the cream of creation, the gems of 
their generation, and yet a sensible man 
would not live in the same house with them 
for all the money you could count. They are 
saints abroad, but ask their maids what they 
are at home. Great cry and little wool is 
common enough in religion : you will find 
that those who crack themselves up are 
generally cracked, and those who despise 
their neighbors come to be despised them- 
selves. 

Many try wickedness, and run into bad 
company, and rake the kennels of vice. I 



GREAT CRY AND LITTLE WOOL. 93 

warrant you they may shear the whole sty- 
ful of filthy creatures and never find a mor- 
sel of wool on the whole lot of them. Loose 
characters, silly amusements, gambling, wan- 
tonness, and such like, are swine that none 
but a fool will try his shears upon. I don't 
deny that there's plenty of swinish music— 
who ever expected that there would be 
silence in a piggery ? But then noise cannot 
fill the heart, nor laughter lighten the soul. 
John Ploughman has tried for himself, 
and he knows by experience that all the 
world is nothing but a hog that is not worth 
the shearing : " Vanity of vanities, all is 
vanity." But yet there is wool to be had ; 
there are real joys to be got for the asking 
if we ask aright. Below, all things deceive 
us, but above us there is a true Friend. 
" Wherefore do ye spend your money for 
that which is not bread, and your labor for 
that which satisfieth not ? " This is John 
Ploughman's verdict, which he wishes all 
his readers to take note of — 



" Faith in Jesus Christ will give 
Sweetest pleasures while we live ; 
Faith in Jesus must supply- 
Solid comfort when we die." 



YOU MAY BEND THE SAPLING, 
BUT NOT THE TREE. 




LADDER, and pole, and cord will be of 
no use to straighten the bent tree; 
it should have been looked after much 
earlier. Train trees when they are saplings 

(94) 



BEND THE SAPLING. 95 

and young lads before the down comes on 
their chins. If you want a bullfinch to 
pipe, whistle to him while he is young; he 
will scarcely catch the tune after he has 
learnt the wild bird's note. Begin early to 
teach, for children begin early to sin. 
Catch them young and you may hope to 
keep them. 

Ere your boy has reached to seven, 
Teach him well the way to heaven : 
Better still the work will thrive, 
If he learns before he's five. 

What is learned young is learned for life. 
What we hear at the first we remember to 
the last. The bent twig grows up a crooked 
tree. Horse-breakers say 

" The tricks a colt getteth at his first backing, 
Will whilst he continueth never be lacking." 

When a boy is rebellious, conquer him, and 
do it well the first time, that there may be 
no need to do it again. A child's first les- 
son should be obedience, and after that you 
may teach it what you please : yet the 
young mind must not be laced too tight, or 
you may hurt its growth and hinder its 



96 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

strength. They say a daft nurse makes a 
wise child, but I do not believe it : nobody 
needs so much common sense as a mother 
or a governess. It does not do to be al- 
ways thwarting; and yet remember if you 
give a child his will and a whelp his fill, 
both will surely turn out ill. A child's back 
must be made to bend, but it must not be 
broken. He must be ruled, but not with a 
rod of iron. His spirit must be conquered, 
but not crushed. 

Nature does sometimes overcome nurture, 
but for the most part the teacher wins the 
day. Children are what they are made : 
the pity is that so many are spoiled in the 
bringing up. A child may be rocked too 
hard ; you may spoil him either by too 
much cuffing or too much kissing. I knew 
two boys who had a Christian mother, but 
she always let them have their own way. 
The consequence was that when they grew 
up they took to drinking and low company 
and soon spent the fortune their father left 
them. No one controlled them and they 
had no control over themselves, and so they 
just rattled along the broad road like 
butcher boys with runaway horses, and 



BEND THE SAPLING, 97 

there was no stopping them. A birch or 
two worn out upon them when they were 
little would have been a good use of timber. 

Still, a child can be treated too hardly, 
and especially he can be shut up too many 
hours in school, when a good run and a 
game of play would do him more good. 
Gows don't give any the more milk for 
being often milked, nor do children learn 
any more because of very long hours in a 
hot room. 

A boy can be driven to learn till he loses 
half his wits : forced fruits have little flavor; 
a man at five is a fool at fifteen. If you 
make veal of the calf he will never turn to 
beef. Yet learning may be left so long that 
the little dunce is always behindhand. 

There's a medium in everything and he 
is a good father who hits upon it, so that he 
governs his family with love, and his family 
loves to be governed by him. Some are 
like Eli, who let his sons sin and only chided 
them a little ; these will turn out to be cruel 
parents in the long run : others are tod 
strict, and make home miserable, and so 
drive the youngsters to the wrong road in 
another way. Tight clothes are very apt to 
7 



98 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

tear, and hard laws are often broken : but 
loose garments tear too, and where there 
are no laws at all, things are sure to go 
amiss. So you see it is easy to err on either 
side, and hard to dance the tight-rope of 
wisdom. Depend on it, he who has a wife 
and bairns will never be short of care to 
carry. See what we get when we come to 
marry, yet many there are who will not 
tarry. 

In these days children have a deal too/ 
much of their own way, and often make 
their mothers and fathers their slaves. It 
has come to a fine pass when the goslings 
teach the geese, and the kittens rule the 
cat : it is the upsetting of everything, and 
no parent ought to put up with it. It is as 
bad for the boys and girls as it is for the 
grown folk, and it brings out the worst side 
of their characters. I would sooner be a 
cat on hot bricks, or a toad under a harrow, 
than let my own children be my masters. 
No, the head must be the head, or it will 
hurt the whole body. 

For children out of place 
Are a father's disgrace, 
If you rule not you'll rue, 
For they'll quickly rule you. 



A MAN MAY LOVE HIS HOUSE, 

THOUGH HE RIDE NOT ON THE 

RIDGE. 



YOU can love your house and not ride 
on the ridge ; there's a medium in 
everything. You can be fond of your wife 

(99) 



ioo JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

without being her drudge, and you can love 
your children dearly, and yet not give them 
their own way in everything. Some men are 
of so strange a kidney that they set no 
bounds to their nonsense. If they are fond 
of roast beef they must needs suck the spit; 
they cannot rest with eating the pudding, 
they must swallow the bag. If they dis- 
like a thing, the very smell of it sets them 
grumbling, and if they like it they must 
have it everywhere and always, for nothing 
else is half so sweet. When they do go in 
for eating rabbits, they have 

Rabbits young and rabbits old, 
Rabbits hot and rabbits cold, 
Rabbits tender, rabbits tough : 
Never can they have enough. 

Whatever they take up takes them up, and for 
a season they cannot seize on anything else* 
At election times the barber cannot trim his 
customer's poll because of the polling, and 
the draper cannot serve you with calico be- 
cause he is canvassing. The nation would 
go to the dogs altogether if the cat's-meat 
man did not secure the election by sticking 
his mark on the ballot paper. It is supposed 



RIDE NO T YO UR HOBB YTOO HARD. 101 

that the globe would leave off turning round 
if our Joe Scroggs did not go down to the 
"Dun Cow," and read the paper, and have 
his say upon politics, in the presence of the 
house of commons assembled in the tap- 
room. I do not quite think so, but I know 
this, that when the Whigs and the Tories 
and the Radicals are about, Scroggs is good 
for nothing all day long. What party he 
belongs to I don't know, but I believe his 
leading principle will be seen in the follow- 
ing verse : — 

If gentlemen propose a glass 

He never says them nay ; 
For he always thinks it right to drink 

While other people pay. 

You can make a good thing become a 
nuisance by harping on that one string from 
dawn to dusk. A hen with one chick makes 
no end of scratching and clucking, and so 
does a fellow of one idea. He has a bee in 
his bonnet, and he tries to put a wasp in 
yours. He duns you, and if you do not 
agree with him he counts you his enemy. 
When you meet with him you are un- 
fortunate, and when you leave him you will 
better yourself go where you may : " there's 



102 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

small sorrow at our parting, " as the old mare 
said to the broken cart. You may try to 
humor him, but he will have all the more 
humors if you do, for the man knows no 
moderation, and if you let him ride on the 
roof he will soon sit on the chimney-pot. 

One man of my acquaintance used to take 
Morrison's pills every day of his life, and 
when I called to see him I had not been 
there ten minutes before he wanted me to 
take a dose, but I could not swallow what 
he told me nor the pills either, so I told him 
I dare say they were very good for him, but 
they did not suit my constitution : however, 
he kept on with his subject till I was fain to 
be off. Another man never catches sight of 
me but he talks about vaccination and goes 
on against it till he froths at the mouth, and 
I am half afraid he will inoculate me. My 
master had a capital horse, worth a good 
deal of money, only he always shied at a 
stone-heap on the road, and if there were 
fifty of them he always bolted ofT the road 
every time. He had got heaps on his brain, 
poor creature, and though he was fit for a 
nobleman's carriage he had to be put to 
plough. Some men have got stone-heaps 



RIDE NOT YOUR HOBBY TOO HARD, 103 

in their poor noddles and this spoils them 
for life and makes it dangerous for all who 
have to deal with them. What queer fish 
there are in our pond ! I am afraid that most 
of us have a crack somewhere, but we don't 
all show it quite so much as some. We 
ought to have a good deal of patience, and 
then we shall find amusement where else 
we should be bothered to death. One of 
my mates says the world is not round, and 
so I always drop into his notion and tell 
him this is a flat world and he is a flat 
too. 

What a trial it is to be shut up for an 
hour with a man or a woman with a hobby ; 
riding in a horsebox with a bear with a sore 
head is nothing to it. The man is so fond 
of bacon that he wants you to kiss his pig, 
and all the while you hope you will never 
again see either the man or his pork as long 
as you live. No matter what the whole hog 
may be, the man who goes it is terrible. 

Rocking horse for boy, 
Hobby horse for man ; 
Each one rides his toy 
Whenever he can. 



104 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

The boy is right glad 
Though he rideth alone ; 
His father's own fad 
By the world must be known. 

Of the two hobby rides, 
The boy's is the best ; 
For the man often chides, 
And gives you no rest. 

It is a good thing for a man to be fond of 
his own trade and his own place, but still 
there is reason in everything, even in roast- 
ing eggs. When a man thinks that his 
place is below him he will pretty soon 
be below his place, and therefore a good 
opinion of your own calling is by no means 
an evil ; yet nobody is everybody, and no 
trade is to crow over the rest. The cobbler 
has his awl but he is not all, and the hatter 
wears a crown but he is not king. A man 
may come to market without buying my 
onions, and ploughing can be done with 
other horses than mine, though Dapper and 
Violet are something to brag of. The farm- 
ing interest is no doubt first, and so is the 
saddler's, and so is the tinker's, and so is 
the grocer's, and so is the draper's, and so 
is the parson's, and so is the parish beadle's, 



RIDE NOT YOUR HOBBY TOO HARD. 10$ 

and so is every other interest according to 
each man's talk. 

Your trade, as a trade, is all very well, 
But other good folk have their cheeses to sell ; 
You must not expect all the world to bow down, 
And give to one pedlar the sceptre and crown. 

It is astonishing how much men will cry- 
up small matters. They are very busy, but 
it is with catching flies. They talk about a 
mushroom till you would think it was the 
only thing at the Lord Mayor's dinner, and 
the beef and the turkeys went for nothing. 
They say nothing about the leg of mutton, 
for they are so much in love with the trim- 
mings. They can't keep things in their places, 
but make more of a horse's tail than they do 
of his whole body. Like the cock on the 
dunghill, they consider a poor barley-corn 
to be worth more than a diamond. A thing 
happens to suit their taste and so there is 
nothing like it in the whole of England ; no, 
nor in all America or Australia. A duck 
will not always dabble in the same gutter, 
but they will ; for, bless your heart, they 
don't think it a gutter, but a river, if not an 
ocean. They must ride the ridge of the 



106 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES, 

roof, or else burn the house down. A good 
many people love their dogs, but these folks 
take them to bed with them. Other farmers 
fat the calf, but they fall do^n and worship 
it, and what is worse they quarrel with 
everybody who does not think as much of 
their idol as they do. 

It will be a long while before all men be- 
come wise, but it will help on the time if we 
begin to be wise ourselves. Don't let us 
make too much of this world and the things 
of it. We are to use it but not to abuse it ; to 
live in it but not for it; to love our house 
but not to ride on the ridge. Our daily 
bread and daily work are to be minded, and 
yet we must not mind earthly things. We 
must not let the body send the soul to grass, 
rather must we make the limbs servants to 
the soul. The world must not rule us, we 
must reign as kings though we are only 
ploughmen ; and stand upright even if the 
world should be turned upside down. 



GREAT DRINKERS THINK THEM- 
SELVES GREAT MEN. 




WONDERFUL men and white rats 
are not so scarce as most people 
think. Folks may talk as they like about 
Mr. Gladstone and Lord Beaconsfield, and 

(107) 



108 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

that sharp gentleman Bismarck, but Jack, 
and Tom, and Harry, and scores more that 
I know of, could manage their business for 
them a fine sight better ; at least, they think 
so, and are quite ready to try. Great men 
are as plentiful as mice in an old wheat- 
stack down our way. Every parish has 
one or two wonderful men ; indeed, most 
public-houses could show one at least, and 
generally two ; and I have heard that on 
Saturday nights, when our " Blue Dragon" 
is full, there may be seen as many as twenty 
of the greatest men in all the world in the 
taproom, all making themselves greater by 
the help of pots of beer. When the jug 
has been filled and emptied a good many 
times, the blacksmith feels he ought to be 
prime minister; Styles, the carter, sees the 
way to take off all the taxes, and Old Hob, 
the rat-catcher, roars out — 

"They're all a pack of fools, 
And good-for-nothing tools ; 
If they'd only send for me, 
You'd see how things would be. ,, 

If you have a fancy to listen to these 
great men when they are talking you need 



GREAT PUBLIC-MEN. 109 

not go into the bar, for you can hear them 
outside the house ; they generally speak four 
or five at a time, and every one in a Mitcham 
whisper, which is very like a shout. What 
a fine flow of words they have ! There's 
no end to it, and it's a pity there was ever 
any beginning, for there's generally a mix 
up of foul talk with their politics, and this 
sets them all roaring with laughter. A few 
evenings in such company would poison the 
mind of the best lad in the parish. I am 
happy to say that these great men have to 
be turned out at ten o'clock, for then our 
public-house closes ; and none too soon„ 
I'm sure. 

A precious little is enough to make a 
man famous in certain companies ; one fel- 
low knocked a man's eye out at a prize-fight ;; 
another stowed away twice as much pud- 
ding as four pigs could have disposed of; 
another stood on his head and drank a glass 
of beer; and another won a prize by grin- 
ning through a horse-collar; and for such 
things as these the sots of the village think 
mightily of them. Little things please 
little minds, and nasty things please dirty 
minds. If I were one of these wonderful 



no JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES, 

fellows I would ask the nearest way to a 
place where nobody would know me. 

Now I am at it, I will notice a few other 
wonderful bodies who sometimes conde- 
scend to look down on a ploughman; but 
before I make them angry I would give 
them a verse from one of my old uncle's 
songs, which I have shaped a bit. 

" I hope none will be offended with me for writing this, 
For it is not intended for anything amiss ; 
If you consider kindly my remarks you will allow, 
For what can you expect from one whose hand is on 
the plough ? " 

I used to feel quite staggered when I 
heard of an amazing clever man, but I've 
got used to it, as the rook did to the scare- 
crow when he found out that it was a stuffed 
nothing. Like the picture which looked 
best a very long distance off, so do most 
clever fellows. They are swans a mile off, 
but geese when you get near them. Some 
men are too knowing to be wise, their boiler 
bursts because they have more steam than 
they can use. They know too much, and 
having gone over the top of the ladder they 
have gone down on the other side. People 



GREAT PUBLIC-MEN. in 

who are really wise never think themselves 
so : one of them said to me the other day, — 

"All things I thought I knew ; but now confess 
The more T know I know I know the less." 

Simple Simon is in a sad plight in such a 
world as this, but on the whole he gets on 
better than a fellow who is too clever by 
half. Every mouse had need have its eyes 
open nowadays, for the cats are very many 
and uncommonly sharp ; and yet, you mark 
my word, most of the mice that are caught 
are the knowing ones. Somehow or other, 
in an ordinary sort of a world like this, it 
does not answer to be so over and above 
clever. Those who are up to so many 
dodges, find the dodges come down on them 
before long. My neighbor Hinks was much 
too wise a man to follow the plough, like 
poor shallow-pated John Ploughman, and 
so he took to scheming, and has schemed 
himself into one of the largest mansions in 
the country, where he will be provided with 
oakum to pick and a crank to turn during 
the next six calendar months. He had 
better have been a fool, for his cleverness has 
cost him his character. i 



112 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

When a man is too clever to tell the 
truth he will bring himself into no end of 
trouble before long. When he is too clever 
to stick to his trade, he is like the dog that 
let the meat fall into the water through try- 
ing to catch at its shadow. Clever Jack 
can do everything and can do nothing. He 
intends to be rich all at once, and despises 
small gains, and therefore is likely to die a 
beggar. When puffing is trusted and hon- 
est trading is scoffed at, time will not take 
long to wind up the concern. Work is as 
needful now as ever it was if a man would 
thrive ; catching birds by putting salt on 
their tails would be all very well, but the 
creatures will not hold their tails still, and 
so we had better catch them in the usual 
way. The greatest trick for getting on in 
business is to work hard and to live hard. 
There's no making bread without flour, nor 
building houses without labor. I know the 
old saying is — 

" No more mortar, no more brick. 
A cunning knave has a cunning trick ; " 

but for all that things go on much the same 
as ever, and bricks and mortar are still 
wanted. 



TOO CLEVER BY HALF. 113 

I see in the papers, every now and then, 
that some of the clever gentlemen who 
blow up bubble companies are pulled up 
before the courts. Serve them right ! May 
they go where my neighbor Hinks is, every 
one of them. How many a poor trades- 
man is over head and ears in difficulty 
through them ! I hope in future all men 
will fight shy of these fine companies, and 
swell managers, and very clever men. Men 
are neither suddenly rich nor suddenly good. 
It is all a bag of moonshine when a man 
would persuade you that he knows a way 
of earning money by winking your eye. 
We have all heard of the scheme for mak- 
ing deal boards out of sawdust, and getting 
butter out of mud, but we mean to go on 
with the saw-mill, and keep on milking the 
cows ; for between you and me and the 
blind mare, we have a notion that the plans 
of idiots and very clever men are as like as 
two peas in a shell. 

The worst sort of clever men are those 
who know better than the Bible and are so 
learned that they believe that the world had 
no Maker, and that men are only monkeys 
with their tails rubbed off. Dear, dear me, 
8 



H4 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

this is the sort of talk we used to expect 
from Tom of Bedlam, but now we get it 
from clever men. If things go on in this 
fashion a poor ploughman will not be able 
to tell which is the lunatic and which is the 
philosopher. As for me, the old Book 
seems to be a deal easier to believe than the 
new notions, and I mean to keep to it. Many 
a drop of good broth is made in an old pot, 
and many a sweet comfort comes out of the 
old doctrine. Many a dog has died since I 
first opened my eyes, and every one of these 
dogs has had his day, but in all the days 
put together they have never hunted out a 
real fault in the Bible, nor started anything 
better in its place. They may be very clever, 
but they w r ill not find a surer truth than that 
which God teaches, nor a better salvation 
than that which Jesus brings, and so finding 
my very life in the gospel I mean to live in 
it, and so ends this chapter. 



TWO DOGS FIGHT FOR A BONE, 

AND A THIRD RUNS AWAY 

WITH IT. 




W 



E have all heard of the two men 
who quarrelled over an oyster, and 

(115) 



n6 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

called in a judge to settle the question: he 
ate the oyster himself, and gave them a 
shell each. This reminds me of the story 
of the cow which two farmers could not 
agree about, and so the lawyers stepped in 
and milked the cow for them, and charged 
them for their trouble in drinking the milk. 
Little is got by law, but much is lost by it. 
A suit in law may last longer than any suit 
a tailor can make you, and you may your- 
self be worn out before it comes to an end. 
It is better far to make matters up and keep 
out of court, for if you are caught there you 
are caught in the brambles, and won't get 
out without damage. John Ploughman feels 
a cold sweat at the thought of getting into 
the hands of lawyers. He does not mind 
going to Jericho, but he dreads the gentle- 
men on the road, for they seldom leave a 
feather upon any goose which they pick up. 
However, if men will fight they must not 
blame the lawyers ; if law were cheaper, 
quarrelsome people would have more of it, 
and quite as much would be spent in the 
long run. Sometimes, however, we get 
dragged into court willy nilly, and then one 
had need be wise as a serpent and harmless 



LITTLE IS GAINED BY LAW. 117 

as a dove. Happy is he who finds an honest 
lawyer, and does not try to be his own cli- 
ent. A good lawyer always tries to keep 
people out of law ; but some clients are like 
moths with the candle, they must and will 
burn themselves. He who is so wise that 
he cannot be taught will have to pay for 
his pride. 

Let dogs delight to bark and bite, 

And lose the marrow bone ; 
Let bears and lions growl and fight, 

I'll let the law alone. 

To suffer wrong is surely sad, 

But law-suits are in vain; 
To throw good money after bad 

Will but increase my pain. 



HE LIVES UNDER THE SIGN OF 
THE CAT'S FOOT. 




THE question was once asked, When 
should a man marry ? and the merry 
answer was, that for young men it is too 
soon and for old men it is too late. This is 
(118) 



THE CAT'S FOOT 119 

all very fine, but it will not wash. Both the 
wisdom and the folly of men seem banded 
together to make a mock of this doctrine. 
Men are such fools that they must and will 
marry even if they marry fools. It is wise 
to marry when we can marry wisely, and 
then the sooner the better. How many 
show their sense in choosing a partner it is 
not for me to say, but I fear that in many 
cases love is blind, and makes a very blind 
choice. I don't suppose that some people 
would ever get married at all if love had its 
wits about it. It is a mystery how certain 
parties ever found partners ; truly there's 
no accounting for tastes. However, as they 
make their bed they must lie on it, and as 
they tie the knot they must be tied by it. 
If a man catches a tartar, or lets a tartar 
catch him, he must take his dose of tartaric 
acid, and make as few ugly faces as he can. 
If a three-legged stool come flying through 
the air, he must be thankful for such a plain 
token of love from the woman of his choice, 
and the best thing he can do is to sit down 
on it, and wait for the next little article. 

When it is said of a man, " He lives un- 
der the sign of the cat's foot," he must try 



120 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PIC TUBES. 

and please his pussy that she may not 
scratch him more than such cats generally 
do. A good husband will generally have 
a good wife, or make a bad wife better. 
Bad Jack makes a great noise about bad 
Jill, but there's generally twenty of one 
where there's a score of the other. They 
say a burden of one's own choosing is never 
felt to be heavy, but I don't know, some 
men are loaded with mischief as soon as 
they have a wife to carry. Yet 

A good woman is worth, if she were sold, 
The fairest crown that's made of gold. 

She is a pleasure, a treasure, and a joy with- 
out measure. A good wife and health are 
a man's best wealth ; and he who is in such 
a case should envy no man's place. Even 
when a woman is a little tart it is better 
than if she had no spirit, and made her 
house into a dirt pie. A shrew is better 
than a slut, though one can be quite miser- 
able enough with either, If she is a good 
housewife, and looks well after the children, 
one may put up with a Caudle lecture now 
and then, though a cordial lecture would be a 
deal better. A husband is in a pickle in- 



THE CAT'S FOOT. 121 

deed if he gets tied up to a regular scold ; 
he might as well be skinned and set up to 
his neck in a tub of brine. Did you ever 
hear the scold's song ? Read it, you young 
folks who think of committing matrimony, 
and think twice before you get married 
once. 

When in the morn I ope mine eyes, 

To entertain the day, 
Before my husband e'en can rise, 

I scold him — then I pray. 

When I at table take my place, 

Whatever be the meat, 
I first do scold — and then say grace, 

If so disposed to eat. 

Too fat, too lean, too hot, too cold, 

I always do complain; 
Too raw, too roast, too young, too old — 

Faults I will find or feign. 

Let it be flesh, or fow r l, or fish, 

It never shall be said, 
But I'll find fault with meat or dish, 

With master, or with maid. 

But when I go to bed at night 

I heartily do weep, 
That I must part with my delight — 

I cannot scold and sleep. 



122 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

However, this doth mitigate 

And much abate my sorrow, 
That though to-night it be too late, 

I'll early scold to-morrow. 

When the husband is not a man it is not 
to be wondered at if the wife wears the 
top-boots : the mare may well be the best 
horse when the other horse is a donkey. 
Well may a woman feel that she is lord and 
master when she has to earn the living 
for the family, as is sometimes the case. 
She ought not to be the head, but if she 
has all the brains, what is she to do ? What 
poor dawdles many men would be without 
their wives ! As poor softy Simpkins says, 
if Bill's wife becomes a widow who will cut 
the pudding up for him, and will there be a 
pudding at all ? It is grand when the wife 
knows her place, and keeps it, and they 
both pull together in everything. Then she 
is a helpmeet indeed and makes the house 
a home. Old friend Tusser says, 

" When husband is absent let housewife be chief, 
And look to their labor who live from their sheaf, 
The housewife's so named for she keepeth the house, 
And must tend on her profit as cat on a mouse," 

He is very pat upon it that much of house- 



" SARVES HIM RIGHT." 123 

hold affairs must rest on the wife, and he 
writes, — 

"Both out, not allow, 
Keep home, housewife thou." 

Like the old man and woman in the toy 
which shows the weather, one must be sure 
to be in if the other goes out. When the 
king is abroad the queen must reign at 
home, and when he returns to his throne he 
is bound to look upon her as his crown, 
and prize her above gold and jewels. He 
should feel " if there's only one good wife 
in the whole world, I've got her." John 
Ploughman has long thought just that of 
his own wife, and after five-and-twenty 
years he is more sure of it than ever. He 
never bets, but he would not mind wager- 
ing a farthing cake that there is not a better 
woman on the surface of the globe than his 
own, very own beloved. Happy is the man 
who is happy in his wife. Let him love her 
as he loves himself, and a little better, for 
she is his better half. 

Thank God that hath so blest thee, 
And sit down, John, and rest thee. 

There is one case in which I don't wonder 



124 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

if the wife does put her mate under the 
cat's foot, and that is when he slinks off to 
the public, and wastes his wages. Even 
then love and gentleness is the best way of 
getting him home ; but, really, some topers 
have no feeling, and laugh at kindness, and 
therefore nobody can be surprised if the poor 
wife bristles up and gives her lord and mas- 
ter a taste of tongue. Nothing tries mar- 
ried love more than the pot-house. Wages 
wasted, wife neglected, children in rags : 
if she gives it him hot and strong who can 
blame her? Pitch into him, good woman, 
and make him ashamed of himself, if you 
can. No wonder that you lead a cat and 
dog life while he is such a sorry dog. 

Still, you may as well go home and set 
him a better example, for two blacks will 
never make a white, and if you put him in 
hot water he's sure to get some spirits to 
mix with it. 



HE WOULD PUT HIS FINGER IN 

THE PIE, AND SO HE BURNT 

HIS NAIL OFE 




SOME men must have a finger in every 
pie, or, as the proverb hath it, " their 

(125) 



126 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

oar must be in every man's boat." They 
seem to have no business except to poke 
their noses into other people's business: 
they ought to have snub noses, for they are 
pretty sure to be snubbed. Prying and spy- 
ing, peddling and meddling, these folks are 
in everybody's way, like the old toll-gate. 
They come without being sent for, stop with- 
out being asked, and cannot be got rid of, 
unless you take them by the left leg and 
throw them down stairs, and if you do that 
they will limp up again, and hope they don't 
intrude. No one pays them, and yet they 
give advice more often than any lawyer ; 
and though no one ever thanks them, yet 
there they are, peeping through keyholes 
and listening under the eaves. They are 
as great at asking questions as if they 
wanted you to say the catechism, and as 
eager to give their opinion as if you had 
gone down on your knees to ask it. 

These folks are like dogs that fetch and 
carry ; they run all over the place like star- 
lings when they are feeding their young. 
They make much ado, but never do much, 
unless it is mischief, and at this they are as 
apt as jackdaws. If any man has such 



MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS. 127 

people for his acquaintances, he may well 
say, " Save me from my friends." 

I know your assistance you'll lend, 
When I want it I'll speedily send; 
You need not he making such stir, 
But mind your own business, good sir. 

It is of no more use than if we spoke to 
the pigs, for here is Paul Pry again. Paul 
and his cousins are most offensive people, 
but you cannot offend them if you try. 

Well do I remember the words of a wise 
old Quaker: — "John," said he, " be not 
concerned with that which concerns not 
thee." This taught me a lesson, and I 
made up my mind not to scrub other peo- 
ple's pigs for fear I should soon want scrub- 
bing myself. There is a woman in our 
village who finds fault with all, and all find 
fault with her ; they say her teeth are all 
loose through her tongue rubbing against 
them ; if she could but hold her tongue she 
would be happy enough, but that's the diffi- 
culty — 

" When hens fall a cackling take heed to the nest, 
When drabs fall a whispering farewell to thy rest.'* 



128 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

Will Shepherd was sitting very quiet while 
others were running down their neighbors. 
At last a loose fellow sung out " Look at 
Old Will, he is as silent as a stock-fish; 
is it because he is wise or because he is a 
fool ?" " Well/' said Will, "you may set- 
tle that question how you like, but I have 
been told that a fool cannot be silent." 
Will is set down as very odd, but he is gen- 
erally even with them before he has done. 
One thing is sure, he cares very little what 
they do say so long as they don't worry 
his sheep. He hummed in my ear an old- 
fashioned verse or two the other evening, 
something like this — 

" Since folks will judge me every day, 
Let every man his judgment say; 
I will take it all as children's play, 
For I am as I am, whoever say nay. 

Many there be that take delight 
To judge a man's ways in envy and spite; 
But whether they judge me wrong or right, 
I am as I am, and so do I write. 

How the truth is I leave to you ; 
Judge as ye list, whether false or true. 
Ye know no more than before ye knew, 
For I am as I am whatever ensue." 



MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS. 129 

If folks will meddle with our business it 
is best to take no notice of them ; there's no 
putting them out like letting them stop 
where they are ; they are never so offended 
as when people neither offend them nor take 
offence at them. You might as soon stop 
all the frogs from croaking as quiet idle 
gossips when they once get on the chat. 
Stuff your ear with wool and let them jab- 
ber till their tongue lies still, because they 
have worn all the skin off of it. " Where 
no wood is the fire goeth out," and if 
you don't answer them they can't make a 
blaze for want of fuel. Treat them kindly,, 
but don't give them the treat of quarrelling 
with them. Follow peace with all men, 
even if you cannot overtake it. 



YOU CANT CATCH THE WIND IN 
A NET. 




SOME people get windmills in their heads, 
and go in for all sorts of silly things. 
They talk of ruling the nation as if men 
were to be driven like sheep, and they 
(130) 



YOU CAN'T CATCH THE WIND IN A NET 131 

prate of reforms and systems as if they could 
cut out a world in brown paper, with a pair 
of scissors. Such a body thinks himself 
very deep, but he is as shallow as a milk-pan. 
You can soon know him as well as if you 
had gone through him with a lighted candle, 
and yet you will not know a great deal after 
all. He has a great head, and very little in 
it. He can talk by the dozen, or the gross, 
and say nothing. When he is fussing and 
boasting of his fine doings you soon dis- 
cover that he makes a long harvest of 
very little corn. His tongue is like a pig's 
tail, going all day long and nothing done. 

This is the man who can pay off the 
National Debt, and yet, in his little shop, he 
sells two apples in three days : he has the 
secret of high farming, and loses more at it 
than any man in the county. The more he 
studies the more he misses the mark ; he 
reminds me of a blind man on a blind horse, 
who rode out in the middle of a dark night, 
and the more he tried to keep out of ditches 
the more he fell in. 

When they catch live red herrings on 
Newmarket heath he will bring out a good 
thing, and line his pockets with gold ; up 



132 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

till now, he says, he has been unlucky, and 
he believes that if he were to make a man 
a coffin he would be sure not to die. He is 
going to be rich next year, and you will 
then see what you shall see: just now he 
would be glad of half-a-crown on account, 
for which he will give you a share in his in- 
vention for growing wheat without plough- 
ing or sowing. 

It is odd to see this wise man at times 
when his wits are all up in the moon : he is 
just like Chang, the Chinaman, who said, 
" Here's my umbrella, and here's my bundle, 
but where am If" He cannot find his 
spectacles though he is looking through 
them ; and when he is out riding on his own 
ass, he pulls up and says, " Wherever is 
that donkey ? " 

I have heard of one learned man who 
boiled his watch and stood looking at the 
egg, and another who forgot that he was to 
be married that day, and would have lost 
his lady if his friend had not fetched him 
out of his study. Think of that, my boy, 
and don't fret yourself because you are not 
so overdone with learning as to have for- 
gotten your common sense. 



YOU CAN' TCA TCH THE WIND IN A NET. 133 

The regular wind-catcher is soft as silk 
and as green as grass, and yet he thinks 
himself very long-headed ; and so indeed 
he would be if his ears were taken into 
the measurement. He is going to do — 
well — there's no telling what. He is full 
of wishes but short of will, and so his buds 
never come to flowers or fruit. He is like 
a hen that lays eggs, and never sits on them 
long enough to hatch a single chick. 

Moonshine is the article our friend deals 
in, and it is wonderful what he can see by it. 
He cries up his schemes, and it is said that 
he draws on his imagination for his facts. 
When he is in full swing with one of his 
notions, he does not stick at a trifle. Will 
Shepherd heard one of these gentry the 
other day telling how his new company 
would lead all the shareholders on to Tom 
Tiddler's ground to pick up gold and silver ; 
and when all the talk was over, Will said to 
me, " That's a lie, with a lid on, and a brass 
handle to take hold of it." Rather sharp 
this of Will, for I do believe the man was 
caught on his own hook and believed in his 
own dreams ; yet I did not like him, for he 
wanted us poor fellows to put our little sav- 



134 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES, 

ings into his hands, as if we could afford 
to fly kites with laborers' wages. 

What a many good people there are who 
have religious crazes ! They do nothing, 
but they have wonderful plans for doing 
everything in a jiffy. So many thousand 
people are to give half-a-crown each, and 
so many more a crown, and so many more 
a sovereign, and the meeting-house is to be 
built just so, and no how else. The mischief 
is that the thousands of people do not rush 
forward with their money, and the minister 
and a few hard-working friends have to get 
it together little by little in the old-fashioned 
style, v\ hile your wonderful schemer slinks 
out of the way and gives nothing. I have 
long ago found out that pretty things on 
paper had better be kept there. Our master's 
eldest son had a plan for growing plum-trees 
in our hedges as they do in Kent, but he 
never looked to see whether the soil would 
suit, and so he lost the trees which he put 
in, and there was an end of his damsons. 

" Circumstances alter cases ; 

Different ways suit different places." 

New brooms sweep clean, but they mostly 



YOU CAN'T CATCH THE WIND IN A NET. 135 

sweep up dirt. Plough with what you please, 
I stick to the old horses which have served 
me so well. Fine schemes come to nothing ; 
it is hard work that does it, whether it be 
in the world or in the church. 

" In the laborious husbandman you see 
What all true Christians are or ought to be." 



BEWARE OF THE DOG. 




JOHN PLOUGHMAN did not in his 
first book weary his friends by preach- 
ing, but in this one he makes bold to try 
his hand at a sermon, and hopes he will be ex- 
(136) 



BEWARE OF THE DOG, 137 

cused if it should prove to be only a plough- 
man's preachment. 

If this were a regular sermon preached 
from a pulpit of course I should make it 
long and dismal, like a winter's night, for 
fear people should call me eccentric. As it 
is only meant to be read at home, I will 
make it short, though it will not be sweet, 
for I have not a sweet subject. The text 
is one which has a great deal of meaning in 
it, and is to be read on many a wall. •" Be- 
ware of the Dog." You know what dogs 
are, and you know how you beware of them 
when a bull-dog flies at you to the full 
length of his chain ; so the words don't 
want any clearing up. 

It is very odd that the Bible never says a 
good word for dogs: I suppose the breed 
must have been bad in those eastern parts, 
or else, as our minister tells me, they were 
nearly wild, had no master in particular 4 , 
and were left to prowl about half starved. 
No doubt a dog is very like a man, and be- 
comes a sad dog when he has himself for a 
master. We are all the better for having 
somebody to look up to; and those who 



138 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES, 

say they care for nobody and nobody cares 
for them are dogs of the worst breed, and, 
for a certain reason, are never likely to be 
drowned. 

Dear friends, I shall have heads and tails 
like other parsons, and I am sure I have a 
right to them, for they are found in the sub- 
jects before us. 

Firstly, let us beware of a dirty dog— ox 
as the grand old Book calls them, " evil 
workers " — those who love filth and roll in 
it Dirty dogs will spoil your clothes, and 
make you as foul as themselves. A man is 
known by his company ; if you go with 
loose fellows your character will be tarred 
with the same brush as theirs. People can't 
be very nice in their distinctions ; if they 
see a bird always flying with the crows, 
and feeding and nesting with them, they 
call it a crow, and ninety-nine times out of 
a hundred they are right. If you are fond 
of the kennel, and like to run with the 
hounds, you will never make the world be- 
lieve that you are a pet lamb. Besides, bad 
company does a man real harm, for, as the 
old proverb has it, if you lie down with dogs 
you will get up with fleas. 



BEWARE OF THE DOG. 139 

You cannot keep too far off a man with 
the fever and a man of wicked life. If a 
lady in a fine dress sees a big dog come out 
of a horse-pond, and run about shaking him- 
self dry, she is very particular to keep out 
of his way, and from this we may learn a 
lesson, — when we see a man half gone in 
liquor, sprinkling his dirty talk all around 
him, our best place is half-a-mile off at the 
least. 

Secondly, beware of all snarling dogs. 
There are plenty of these about ; they are 
generally very small creatures, but they more 
than make up for their size by their noise. 
They yap and snap without end. Dr. Watts 
said — 

" Let dogs delight to bark and bite, 
For God has made them so." 

But I cannot make such an excuse for the 
two-legged dogs I am writing about, for 
their own vile tempers, and the devil to- 
gether, have made them what they are. They 
find fault with anything and everything. 
When they dare they howl, and when they 
cannot do that they lie down and growl in- 
wardly. Beware of these creatures. Make 
no friends with an angry man : as well make 



140 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

a bed of stinging nettles or wear a viper for 
a necklace. Perhaps the fellow is just now 
very fond of you, but beware of him, for he 
who barks at others to-day without a cause 
will one day howl at you for nothing. 
Don't offer him a kennel down your yard 
unless he will let you chain him up. When 
you see that a man has a bitter spirit, and 
gives nobody a good word, quietly walk 
away and keep out of his track if you can. 
Loaded guns and quick tempered people 
are dangerous pieces of furniture ; they don't 
mean any hurt, but they are apt to go off 
and do mischief before you dream of it. 
Better go a mile out of your way than get 
into a fight ; better sit down on a dozen tin- 
tacks with their points up than dispute with 
an angry neighbor. 

Thirdly, beware of fawning dogs. They 
jump up upon you and leave the marks of 
their dirty paws. How they will lick your 
hand and fondle you as long as there are 
bones to be got : like the lover who said 
to the cook, " Leave you, dear girl ? Never, 
while you have a shilling." Too much 
sugar in the talk should lead us to suspect 
that there is very little in the heart. The 



BEWARE OF THE DOG. 141 

moment a man praises you to your face, 
mark him, for he is the very gentleman to 
rail at you behind your back. If a fellow 
takes the trouble to flatter he expects to 
be paid for it, and he calculates that he 
will get his wages out of the soft brains of 
those he tickles. When people stoop down 
it generally is to pick something up, 
and men don't stoop to flatter you unless 
they reckon upon getting something out of 
you. When you see too much politeness 
you may generally smell a rat if you give 
a good sniff. Young people need to be on 
the watch against crafty flatterers. Young 
women with pretty faces and a little money 
should especially beware of puppies ! 

Fourthly, beware of a greedy dog, or a 
man who never has enough. Grumbling is 
catching ; one discontented man sets others 
complaining, and this is a bad state of mind 
to fall into. Folks who are greedy are not 
always honest, and if they see a chance they 
will put their spoon into their neighbor's 
porridge ; why not into yours ? See how 
cleverly they skin a flint; before long you 
will find them skinning you, and as you are 
not quite so used to it as the eels are, you 



142 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES, 

had better give Mr. Skinner a wide berth. 
When a man boasts that he never gives any- 
thing away, you may read it as a caution — 
" beware of the dog." A liberal, kind- 
hearted friend helps you to keep down your 
selfishness, but a greedy grasper tempts you 
to put an extra button on your pocket. 
Hungry dogs will wolf down any quantity 
of meat, and then look out for more, and so 
will greedy men swallow farms and houses, 
and then smell around for something else. 
I am sick of the animals : I mean both the 
dogs and men. Talking of nothing but 
gold, and how to make money, and how to 
save it — why one had better live with the 
hounds at once, and howl over your share 
of dead horse. The mischief a miserly 
wretch may do to a man's heart no tongue 
can tell ; one might as well be bitten by a 
mad dog, for greediness is as bad a madness 
as a mortal can be tormented with. Keep 
out of the company of screw-drivers, tight- 
fists, hold-fasts, and blood-suckers : " beware 
of dogs." 

Fifthly, beware of a yelping dog. Those 
who talk much tell a great many lies, and if 
you love truth you had better not love them. 



BEWARE OF THE DOG, 143 

Those who talk much are likely enough to 
speak ill of their neighbors, and of yourself 
among the rest ; and therefore, if you do 
not want to be town-talk, you will be wise 
to find other friends. Mr. Prate-apace will 
weary you out one day, and you will be 
wise to break off his acquaintance before it 
is made. Do not lodge in Clack Street, 
nor next door to the Gossip's Head. A 
lion's jaw is nothing compared to a tale- 
bearer's. If you have a dog which is 
always barking, and should chance to lose 
him, don't spend a penny in advertising for 
him. Few are the blessings which are 
poured upon dogs which howl all night and 
wake up honest householders, but even 
these can be better put up with than those 
incessant chatterers who never let a man's 
character rest either day or night. 

Sixthly, beware of a dog that worries the 
sheep. Such get into our churches, and cause 
a world of misery. Some have new doc- 
trines as rotten as they are new ; others 
have new plans, whims, and crotchets, and 
nothing will go right till these are tried ; 
and there is a third sort, which are out of 
love with everybody and everything, and 



144 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

only come into the churches to see if they 
can make a row. Mark these, and keep 
clear of them. There are plenty of humble 
Christians who only want leave to be quiet 
and mind their own business, and these 
troubles are their plague. To hear the gos- 
pel, and to be helped to do good, is all that 
the most of our members want, but these 
worries come in with their " ologies " and 
puzzlements, and hard speeches, and cause 
sorrow upon sorrow. A good shepherd 
will soon fetch these dogs a crack of the 
head ; but they will be at their work again 
if they see half a chance. What pleasure 
can they find in it? Surely they must 
have a touch of the wolf in their nature. 
At any rate, beware of the dog. 

Seventhly, beware of dogs who have re- 
turned to their vomit. An apostate is like 
a leper. As a rule none are more bitter 
enemies of the cross than those who once 
professed to be followers of Jesus. He who 
can turn away from Christ is not a fit com- 
panion for any honest man. There are 
many abroad nowadays who have thrown 
off religion as easily as a ploughman puts 
off his jacket. It will be a terrible day for; 



BEWARE OF THE DOG. 145 

them when the heavens are on fire above 
them, and the world is ablaze under their 
feet. If a man calls himself my friend, and 
leaves the ways of God, then his way and 
mine are different ; he who is no friend to 
the good cause is no friend of mine. 

Lastly, finally, and to finish up, beware of 
a dog that has no master. If a fellow makes 
free with the Bible, and the laws of his 
country, and common decency, it is time to 
make free to tell him we had rather have 
his room than his company. A certain set 
of wonderfully wise men are talking very 
big things, and putting their smutty fingers 
upon everything which their fathers thought 
to be good and holy. Poor fools, they are 
not half as clever as they think they are. 
Like hogs in a flower-garden, they are for 
rooting up everything ; and some people 
are so frightened that they stand as if they 
were stuck, and hold up their hands in hor- 
ror at the creatures. When the hogs have 
been in my master's garden, and I have had 
the big whip handy, I warrant you I have 
made a clearance, and I only wish I was a 
scholar, for I would lay about me among 
these free-thinking gentry, and make them 
10 



146 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

squeal to a long metre tune. As John 
Ploughman has other fish to fry, and other 
tails to butter, he must leave these mis- 
chievous creatures, and finish his rough 
ramshackle sermon. 

" Beware of the dog." Beware of all who 
will do you harm. Good company is to be 
had, why seek bad ? It is said of heaven, 
" without are dogs." Let us make friends 
of those who can go inside of heaven, for 
there we hope to go ourselves. We shall 
go to our own company when we die ; let 
it be such that we shall be glad to go to it. 



LIKE CAT LIKE KIT. 




MOST men are what their mothers 
made them. The father is away 
from home all day, and has not half the 
influence over the children that the mother 

(H7) 



148 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

has. The cow has most to do with the 
calf. If a ragged colt grows into a good 
horse, we know who it is that combed 
him. A mother is therefore a very re- 
sponsible woman, even though she may be 
the poorest in the land, for the bad or the 
good of her boys and girls very much de- 
pends upon her. As is the gardener such is 
the garden, as is the wife such is the family. 
Samuel's mother made him a little coat 
every year, but she had done a deal for 
him before that : Samuel would not have 
been Samuel if Hannah had not been Han- 
nah. We shall never see a better set of 
men till the mothers are better. We must 
have Sarahs and Rebekahs before we shall 
see Isaacs and Jacobs. Grace does not 
run in the blood, but we generally find 
that the Timothies have mothers of a godly 
sort. 

Little children give their mother the 
headache, but if she lets them have their 
own way, when they grow up to be great 
children they will give her the heartache. 
Foolish fondness spoils many, and letting 
faults alone spoils more. Gardens that are 
never weeded will grow very little worth 



LIKE CAT LIKE KIT. 149 

gathering; all watering and no hoeing will 
make a bad crop. A child may have too 
much of its mother's love, and in the long 
run it may turn out that it had too little. 
Soft-hearted mothers rear soft-headed chil- 
dren ; they hurt them for life because they 
are afraid of hurting them when they are 
young. Coddle your children, and they 
will turn out noodles. You may sugar a 
child till everybody is sick of it. Boys' 
jackets need a little dusting every now and 
then, and girls' dresses are all the better 
for occasional trimming. Children without 
chastisement are fields without ploughing. 
The very best colts want breaking in. Not 
that we like severity ; cruel mothers are 
not mothers, and those who are always 
flogging and fault-finding ought to be 
flogged themselves. There is reason in all 
things, as the madman said when he cut off 
his nose. 

Good mothers are very dear to their 
children. There's no mother in the world 
like our own mother. My friend Sanders, 
from Glasgow, says, " The mither's breath 
is aye sweet." Every woman is a handsome 
woman to her own son. That man is not 



150 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

worth hanging who does not love his 
mother. When good women lead their 
little ones to the Saviour, the Lord Jesus 
blesses not only the children, but their 
mothers as well. Happy are they among 
women who see their sons and their daugh- 
ters walking in the truth. 

He who thinks it easy to bring up a 
family never had one of his own. A 
mother who trains her children aright had 
need be wiser than Solomon, for his son 
turned out a fool. Some children are per- 
verse from their infancy ; none are born per- 
fect, but some have a double share of im- 
perfections. Do what you will with some 
children, they don't improve. Wash a dog, 
comb a dog, still a dog is but a dog : trouble 
seems thrown away on some children. Such 
cases are meant to drive us to God, for he 
can turn blackamoors white, and cleanse 
out the leopard's spots. It is clear that 
whatever faults our children have, we are 
their parents, and we cannot find fault with 
the stock they came of. Wild geese do not 
lay tame eggs. That which is born of a hen 
will be sure to scratch in the dust. The 
child of a cat will hunt after mice. Every 



LIKE CAT LIKE KIT. 151 

creature follows its kind. If we are black, 
we cannot blame our offspring if they are 
dark too. Let us do our best with them, 
and pray the Mighty Lord to put his hand 
to the work. Children of prayer will grow 
up to be children of praise ; mothers who 
have wept before God for their sons, will 
one day sing a new song over them. Some 
colts often break the halter, and yet become 
quiet in harness. God can make those new 
whom we cannot mend, therefore let mothers 
never despair of their children as long as 
they live. Are they away from you across 
the sea ? Remember, the Lord is there as 
well as here. Prodigals may wander, but 
they are never out of sight of the Great 
Father, even though they may be " a great 
way off." 

Let mothers labor to make home the 
happiest place in the world. If they are al- 
ways nagging and grumbling they will lose 
their hold of their children, and the boys 
will be tempted to spend their evenings 
away from home. Home is the best place 
for boys and men, and a good mother is the 
soul of home. The smile of a mother's 
face has enticed many into the right path, 



152 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

and the fear of bringing a tear into her eye 
has called off many a man from evil ways. 
The boy may have a heart of iron, but his 
mother can hold him like a magnet. The 
devil never reckons a man to be lost so long 
as he has a good mother alive. O woman, 
great is thy power ! See to it that it be 
used for him who thought of his mother 
even in the agonies of death. 



A HORSE WHICH CARRIES A HAL- 
TER IS SOON CAUGHT. 




WITH a few oats in a sieve the nag 
is tempted, and the groom soon 
catches him if he has his halter on ; but the 
other horse, who has no rope dangling from 

(i53) 



154 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES, 

his head, gives master Bob a sight of his 
heels, and away he scampers. To my mind, 
a man who drinks a glass or two, and goes 
now and then to the tap-room, is a horse 
with his bridle on, and stands a fair chance 
of being locked up in Sir John Barleycorn's 
stables, and made to carry Madame Drink 
and her habit. There's nothing like coming 
out fair and square, and standing free as the 
air. Plenty will saddle you if they can 
catch you ; don't give them the ghost of a 
chance. A bird has not got away as long 
as there is even a thread tied to its leg. 

"I've taken the pledge and I will not falter; 
I'm out in the field and I carry no halter ; 
I'm a lively nag that likes plenty of room, 
So I'm not going down to the ' Horse and Groom.' " 

In other concerns it is much the same : 
you can't get out of a bad way without 
leaving it altogether, bag and baggage. 
Half-way will never pay. One thing or the 
other : be an out-and-outer, or else keep in 
altogether. Shut up the shop and quit the 
trade if it is a bad one : to close the front 
shutters and serve customers at the back 
door is a silly attempt to cheat the devil, 



THE HORSE WITHOUT A HALTER. 155 

and it will never answer. Such hide-and- 
seek behavior shows that your conscience 
has just enough light for you to read your 
own condemnation by it. Mind what you 
are at, don't dodge like a rat. 

I am always afraid of the tail end of a 
habit. A man who is always in debt will 
never be cured till he has paid the last six- 
pence. When a clock says " tick " once, it 
will say the same again unless it is quite 
stopped. Harry Higgins says he only owes 
for one week at the grocer's, and I am as 
sure as quarter-day that he will be over 
head and ears in debt before long. I tell 
him to clean off the old score and have 
done with it altogether. He says the trades- 
people like to have him on their books, 
but I am quite sure no man in his senses 
dislikes ready money. I want him to give 
up the credit system, for if he does not he 
will need to outrun the constable. 

Bad companions are to be left at once. 
There's no use in shilly-shallying; they 
must be told that we would sooner have 
their room than their company, and if they 
call again we must start them off with a flea 
in each ear. Somehow I can't get young 



156 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

fellows to come right out from the black 
lot ; they think they can play with fire and 
not be burned. Scripture says, " Ye fools, 
when will ye be wise ? " 

" April the first stands, mark'd by custom's rules, 
A day for being, and for making, fools ; 
But, pray, what" custom, or what rule, supplies 
A day for making, or for being, wise ? " 

Nobody wants to keep a little measles or 
a slight degree of fever. We all want to 
be quite quit of disease ; and so let us try 
to be rid of every evil habit. What wrong 
would it be right for us to stick to ? Don't 
let us tempt the devil to tempt us. If we 
give Satan an inch, he will take a mile. As 
long as we carry his halter he counts us 
among his nags. Off with the halter! 
May the grace of God set us wholly free. 
Does not Scripture say, " Come out from 
among them, and be ye separate, and touch 
not the unclean thing " ? 



AN OLD FOX IS SHY OF A TRAP. 




THE old fox knows the trap of old. 
You don't catch him so easily as you 
would a cub. He looks sharp at the sharp 
teeth, and seems to say, 

(i57) 



158 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

" Hello, my old chap, 
I spy out your trap. 
To-day, will you fetch me? 
Or wait till you catch me ? 

The cat asked the mice to supper, but 
only the young ones would come to the 
feast, and they never went home again. 
" Will you walk into my parlor ? " said the 
spider to the fly, and the silly creature did 
walk in, and was soon as dead as a door- 
nail. 

What a many traps have been set for 
some of us. Man-traps and woman-traps ; 
traps to catch us by the eye, by the ear, by 
the throat, and by the nose; traps for the 
head and traps for the heart ; day traps, and 
night traps, and traps for any time you like. 
The baits are of all sorts, alive and dead, 
male and female, common and particular. 
We had need be wiser than foxes, or we 
shall soon hear the snap of the man-trap 
and feel its teeth. 

Beware of beginnings : he who does not 
take the first wrong step will not take the 
second. Beware of drops, for the fellows 
who drink take nothing but a " drop of 
beer," or " a drop too much." Drop your 



BEWARE OF MAN-TRAPS. 159 

drop of grog. Beware of him who says " Is 
it not a little one ? " Little sins are the 
eggs of great sorrows. Beware of lips 
smeared with honey: see how many flies 
are caught with sweets. Beware of evil 
questions which raise needless doubts, and 
make it hard for a man to trust his Maker. 
Beware of a bad rich man who is very liberal 
to you ; he will buy you first and sell you 
afterwards. Beware of a dressy young 
woman, without a mind or a heart ; you 
may be in a net before you can say Jack 
Robinson* 

" Pretty fools are no ways rare : 
Wise men will of such beware." 

Beware of the stone which you stumbled 
over the last time you went that way. Be- 
ware of the man who never bewares, and 
beware of the man whom God has marked. 
Beware of writing your name on the back 
of a bill, even though your friend tells you 
ten times over " it is only a matter of form, 
you know." It is a form which you had 
better " formally decline," as our school- 
master says. If you want to be chopped 
up, put your hand to a bill ; but if you want 



160 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

to be secure never stand as security for any 
living man, woman, child, youth, maiden, 
cousin, brother, uncle, or mother-in-law. 
Beware of trusting all your secrets with any- 
body but your wife. Beware of a man who 
will lie, a woman who tells tales out of 
school, a shop-keeper who sends in his bill 
twice, and a gentleman who will make your 
fortune if you will find him a few pounds. 
Beware of a mule's hind foot, a dog's tooth, 
and a woman's tongue. Last of all, beware 
of no man more than of yourself, and take 
heed in this matter many ways, especially 
as to your talk. Five words cost Zacharias 
forty weeks' silence. Many are sorry they 
spoke, but few ever mourn that they held 
their tongue. 

" Who looks may leap, and save his shins from knocks; 
Who tries may trust, or foulest treachery find ; 
He saves his steed who keeps him under locks ; 
Who speaks with heed may boldly speak his mind. 

But he whose tongue before his wit doth run, 
Oft speaks too soon and grieves when he has done. 
Full oft loose speech hath bound men fast in pain, 
Beware of taking from thy tongue the rein." 



A BLACK HEN LAYS A WHITE 
EGG. 




THE egg is white enough though the 
hen is black as a coal. This is a 
very simple thing, but it has pleased the 
ii (161) 



1 62 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

simple mind of John Ploughman, and made 
him cheer up when things have gone hard 
with him. Out of evil comes good, through 
the great goodness of God. From threat- 
ening clouds we get refreshing showers ; 
in dark mines men find bright jewels : and 
so from our worst troubles come our best 
blessings. The bitter cold sweetens the 
ground, and the rough winds fasten the roots 
of the old oaks. God sends us letters of 
love in envelopes with black borders. 
Many a time have I plucked sweet fruit 
from bramble bushes, and taken lovely roses 
from among prickly thorns. Trouble is to 
believing men and women like the sweet- 
briar in our hedges, and where it grows 
there is a delicious smell all around if the 
dew do but fall upon it from above. 

Cheer up, mates, all will come right in the 
end. The darkest night will turn to a fair 
morning in due time. Only let us trust in 
God, and keep our heads above the waves 
of fear. When our hearts are right with 
God everything is right. Let us look for 
the silver which lines every cloud, and when 
we do not see it let us believe that it is 
there. We are all at school, and our great 



THE BLACK HEN LA YS A WHITE EGG. 163 

Teacher writes many a bright lesson on the 
black-board of affliction. Scant fare teaches 
us to live on heavenly bread, sickness bids 
us send off for the good Physician, loss of 
friends makes Jesus more precious, and even 
the sinking of our spirits brings us to live 
more entirely upon God. All things are 
working together for the good of those who 
love God, and even death itself will bring 
them their highest gain. Thus the black 
hen lays a white egg. 

" Since all that I meet shall work for my good, 
The bitter is sweet, the medicine is food ; 
Though painful at present 'twill cease before long, 
And then, oh how pleasant the conqueror's song ! " 



HE LOOKS ONE WAY AND PULLS 
THE OTHER. 




HE faces the shore, but he is pulling 
for the ship : this is the way of those 
who row in boats, and also of a great many 
who never trust themselves on the water. 
(164) 



LOOKS ONE WAY, PULLS THE OTHER. 165 

The boatman is all right, but the hypocrite 
is all wrong, whatever rites he may practise. 
I cannot endure Mr. Facing-both-ways, yet 
he has swarms of cousins. 

It is ill to be a saint without and a devil 
within, to be a servant of Christ before the 
world in order to serve the ends of self and 
the devil, while inwardly the heart hates all 
good things. There are good and bad of 
all classes, and hypocrites can be found 
among ploughmen as well as among par- 
sons. It used to be so in the olden times, for 
I remember an old verse which draws out 
just such a character: the man says, — 



" I'll have a religion all of my own, 
Whether Papist or Protestant shall not be known ; 
And if it proves troublesome I will have none.'' 



In our Lord's day many followed him, 
but it was only for the loaves and fishes : 
they do say that some in our parish don't 
go quite so straight as the Jews did, for 
they go to the church for the loaves, and 
then go over to the Baptist chapel for the 
fishes. I don't want to judge, but I certainly 
do know some who, if they do not care 



166 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES, 

much for faith, are always following after 
charity. 

Better die than sell your soul to the 
highest bidder. Better be shut up in the 
workhouse than fatten upon hypocrisy. 
Whatever else we barter, let us never try to 
turn a penny by religion, for hypocrisy is 
the meanest vice a man can come to. 

It is a base thing to call yourself Christ's 
horse and yet carry the devil's saddle. 
The worst kind of wolf is that which wears 
a sheep's skin. Jezebel was never so ugly 
as when she had finished painting her face. 
Above all things, then, brother loborers, let 
us be straight as an arrow, and true as a die, 
and never let us be time-servers, or turn- 
coats. Never let us carry two faces under 
one hat, nor blow hot and cold with the 
same breath. 



STICK TO IT AND DO IT. 




SET a stout heart to a stiff hill, and the 
wagon will get to the top of it. 
There's nothing so hard but a harder thing 
will get through it ; a strong job can be 
managed by a strong resolution. Have at 

(167) 



168 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

it and have it. Stick to it and succeed. 
Till a thing is done men wonder that you 
think it can be done, and when you have 
done it they wonder it was never done be- 
fore. 

In my picture the wagon is drawn by 
two horses ; but I would have every man 
who wants his way in life pull as if all de- 
pended on himself. Very little is done 
right when it is left to other people. The 
more hands to do work the less there is 
done. One man will carry two pails of 
water for himself; two men will only carry 
one pail between them, and three will come 
home with never a drop at all. A child 
with several mothers will die before it runs 
alone. Know your business and give your 
mind to it, and you will find a buttered loaf 
where a sluggard loses his last crust. 

In these times it's no use being a farmer 
if you don't mean work. The days are gone 
by for gentlemen to make a fortune off of 
a farm by going out shooting half their time. 
If foreign wheats keep on coming in, farmers 
will soon learn that — 

" He who by the plough would thrive, 
Himself must either hold or drive." 



STICK TO IT AND SUCCEED. 169 

Going to Australia is of no use to a man if 
he carries a set of lazy bones with him. 
There's a living to be got in old England at 
almost any trade if a fellow will give his 
mind to it. A man who works hard and 
has his health and strength is a great deal 
happier than my lord Tom Noddy, who 
does nothing and is always ailing. Do you 
know the old song of " The Nobleman's 
generous kindness" ? You should hear our 
Will sing it. I recollect some of the verses. 
The first one gives a picture of the hard- 
working laborer with a large family — 

" Thus careful and constant, each morning he went 
Unto his day labor with joy and content ; 
So jocular and jolly he'd whistle and sing, 
As blithe and as brisk as the birds in the spring." 

The other lines are the ploughman's own 
story of how he spent his life, and I wish 
that all countrymen could say the same. 

" I reap and I mow, I harrow and I sow, 
Sometimes a hedging and ditching I go ; 
No work comes amiss, for I thrash and I plough, 
Thus my bread I do earn by the sweat of my brow, 

" My wife she is willing to pull in a yoke, 
We live like two lambs, nor each other provoke ; 



170 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES, 

We both of us strive, like the laboring ant, 
And do our endeavors to keep us from want. 

" And when I come home from my labor at night, 
To my wife and my children in whom 1 delight, 
I see them come round me with prattling noise. 
Now these are the riches a poor man enjoys. 

" Though I am as weary as weary may be, 
The youngest I commonly dance on my knee ; 
I find in content a continual least, 
And never repine at my lot in the least." 

So, you see, the poor laborer may work 
hard and be happy all the same ; and surely 
those who are in higher stations may do the 
like if they like. 

He is a sorry dog who wants game and 
will not hunt for it: let us never lie down 
in idle despair, but follow on till we succeed. 

Rome was not built in a day, nor much 
else, unless it be a dog-kennel. Things 
which cost no pains are slender gains. 
Where there has been little sweat there will 
be little sweet. Jonah's gourd came up in 
a night, but then it perished in a night. 
Light come, light go : that which flies in at 
one window will be likely to fly out at 
another. It's a very lean hare that hounds 
catch without running for it, and a sheep 



STICK TO IT AND SUCCEED. 171 

that is no trouble to shear has very little 
wool. For this reason a man who cannot 
push on against wind and weather stands a 
poor chance in this world. 

Perseverance is the main thing in life. To 
hold on, and hold out to the end, is the 
chief matter. If the race could be won by 
a spurt, thousands would wear the blue 
ribbon; but they are short-winded and pull 
up after the first gallop. They begin with 
flying, and end in crawling backwards. 
When it comes to collar work, many horses 
turn to jibbing. If the apples do not fall 
at the first shake of the tree your hasty folks 
are too lazy to fetch a ladder, and in too 
much of a hurry to wait till the fruit is ripe 
enough to fall of itself. The hasty man is 
as hot as fire at the outset, and as cold as 
ice'at the end. He is like the Irishman's 
saucepan, which had many good points 
about it, but it had no bottom. He who can- 
not bear the burden and heat of the day is 
not worth his salt, much less his potatoes. 

Before you begin a thing, make sure it is 
the right thing to do : ask Mr. Conscience 
about it. Do not try to do what is impossi- 
ble : ask Common Sense. It is of no use 



172 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

to blow against a hurricane, or to fish for 
whales in a washing tub. Better give up a 
foolish plan than go on and burn your fin- 
gers with it : better bend your neck than 
knock your forehead. But when you have 
once made up your mind to go a certain 
road, don't let every molehill turn you out 
of the path. One stroke fells not an oak. 
Chop away, axe, you'll down with the tree 
at last ! A bit of iron does not soften the 
moment you put it into the fire. Blow, smith ! 
Put on more coals ! Get it red-hot and hit 
hard with the hammer, and you will make 
a ploughshare yet. Steady does it. Hold 
on and you have it. Brag is a fine fellow 
at crying " Tally-ho ! " but Perseverance 
brings home the brush. 

We ought not to be put out of heart 
by difficulties : they are sent on purpose to 
try the stuff we are made of; and depend 
upon it they do us a world of good. There's 
a sound reason why there are bones in our 
meat and stones in our land. A world where 
everything was easy would be a nursery for 
babies, but not at all a fit place for men. 
Celery is not sweet till it has felt a frost, 
and men don't come to their perfection till 



STICK TO IT AND SUCCEED, 173 

disappointment has dropped a half-hundred 
weight or two on their toes. Who would 
know good horses if there were no heavy 
loads ? If the clay was not stiff, my old 
Dapper and Violet would be thought no 
more of than Tomkins' donkey. Besides, 
to work hard for success makes us fit to 
bear it : we enjoy the bacon all the more 
because we have got an appetite by earning 
it. When prosperity pounces on a man like 
an eagle, it often throws him down. If we 
overtake the cart, it is a fine thing to get up 
and ride ; but when it comes behind us at 
a tearing rate, it is very apt to knock us down 
and run over us, and when we are lifted into 
it we find our leg is broken, or our arm 
out of joint, and we cannot enjoy the ride. 
Work is always healthier for us than idle- 
ness ; it is always better to wear out shoes 
than sheets. I sometimes think, when I put 
on my considering cap, that success in life 
is something like getting married : there's 
a very great deal of pleasure in the courting, 
and it is not a bad thing when it is a mod- 
erate time on the road. Therefore, young 
man, learn to wait, and work on. Don't 
throw away your rod, the fish will bite some 



174 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

time or other. The cat watches long at the 
hole, but catches the mouse at last. The 
spider mends her broken web, and the flies 
are taken before long. Stick to your call- 
ing, plod on, and be content ; for, make sure, 
if you can undergo you shall overcome. 

If bad be your prospects, don't sit still and cry, 
But jump up, and say to yourself, " I will try." 

Miracles will never cease! My neighbor, 
Simon Gripper, was taken generous about 
three months ago. The story is well worth 
telling. He saw a poor blind man, led by 
a little girl, playing on a fiddle. His heart 
was touched, for a wonder. He said to me, 
" Ploughman, lend me a penny, there's a 
good fellow." I fumbled in my pocket, 
and found two halfpence, and handed them 
to him. More fool I, for he will never pay 
me again. He gave the blind fiddler one of 
those halfpence, and kept the other, and I 
have not seen either Gripper or my penny 
since, nor shall I get the money back till 
the gate-post outside my garden grows Rib- 
stone pippins. There's generosity for you ! 
The old saying which is put at the top of 
this bit of my talk brought him into my 



STICK TO IT AND SUCCEED. 175 

mind, for he sticks to it most certainly : he 
lives as badly as a church mouse, and 
works as hard as if he was paid by the piece, 
and had twenty children to keep: but I 
would no more hold him up for an example 
than I would show a toad as a specimen of 
a pretty bird. While I talk to you young 
people about getting on, I don't want you 
to think that hoarding up money is real 
success ; nor do I wish you to rise an inch 
above an honest ploughman's lot, if it can- 
not be done without being mean or wicked. 
The workhouse, prison as it is, is a world 
better than a mansion built by roguery and 
greed. If you cannot get on honestly, be 
satisfied not to get on. The blessing of God 
is riches enough for a wise man, and all the 
world is not enough for a fool. Old Gripper's 
notion of how to prosper has, I dare say, a 
good deal of truth in it, and the more's the 
pity. The Lord deliver us from such a 
prospering, I say. That old sinner has often 
hummed these lines into my ears when we 
have got into an argument, and very pretty 
lines they are not, certainly : — 

?' To win the prize in the world's great race 
A man should have a brazen face ; 



176 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

An iron arm to give a stroke, 
And a heart as sturdy as an oak ; 
Eyes like a cat, good in the dark, 
And teeth as piercing as a shark ; 
Ears to hear the gentlest sound, 
Like moles that burrow in the ground; 
A mouth as close as patent locks, 
And stomach stronger than an ox; 
His tongue should be a razor-blade, 
His conscience india-rubber made ; 
His blood as cold as polar ice, 
His hand as grasping as a vice. 
His shoulders should be adequate 
To bear a couple thousand weight ; 
His legs, like pillars, firm and strong, 
To move the great machine along ; 
With supple knees to cringe and crawl, 
And cloven feet placed under all." 

It amounts to this : be a devil in order to 
be happy. Sell yourself outright to the 
old dragon, and he will give you the world 
and the glory thereof. But remember the 
question of the Old Book, " What shall it 
profit a man, if he gain the whole world, 
and lose his own soul ? " There is another 
road to success besides this crooked, dirty, 
cut-throat lane. It is the King's highway, 
of which the same Book says : " Seek ye 
first the kingdom of God, and his righteous- 
ness; and all these things shall be added 



STICK TO IT AND SUCCEED, 177 

unto you." John Ploughman prays that 
all his readers may choose this way, and 
keep to it ; yet even in that way we must 
use diligence, " for the kingdom of heaven 
suffereth violence, and the violent take it by 
force." 



12 



DON'T PUT THE CART BEFORE 
THE HORSE. 




NOBODY will ever take that fellow to 
be a Solomon. He has no more 
sense than a sucking turkey; his wit will 
never kill him, but he may die for want 
(178) 



CART BEFORE THE HORSE. 179 

of it. One would think that he does not 
know which side of himself goes first, or 
which end should be uppermost, for he is 
putting the cart before the horse. However, 
he is not the only fool in the world, for 
nowadays you can't shake your coat out of 
a window without dusting an idiot You 
have to ask yourself what will be the next 
new piece of foolery. 

Amusing blunders will happen. Down 
at our chapel we only have evening meet- 
ings on moonlight nights, for some of our 
friends would never find their way home 
down our Surrey lanes of a dark night. It 
is a long lane that has no turning, but ours 
have plenty of turnings, and are quite as 
long as one likes them when it is pitch dark, 
for the trees meet over your head and won't 
let a star peep through. What did our old 
clerk do the other Sunday but give notice 
that there would be no moon next Wednes- 
day night in consequence of there being 
no service. He put the cart before the 
horse that time. So it was with the young 
parson, of very fine ideas, who tried to make 
us poor clodhoppers see the wisdom of 
Providence in making the great rivers run 



180 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

near the large towns, while our village had 
a small brook to suit the size of it. We 
had a quiet laugh at the good man as we 
walked home through the corn, and we 
wondered why it never occurred to him that 
the Thames was in its bed long before Lon- 
don was up, and our tiny stream ran through 
its winding ways long before a cottager 
dipped his pail into it. 

Dick Widgeon had a married daughter 
who brought her husband as pretty a baby 
as one might wish to see. When it was 
born, a neighbor asked the old man whether 
it was a boy or a girl. " Dear, dear/' said 
Dick, " here's a kettle of fish! I'm either a 
grandfather or a grandmother, and I'm sure 
I don't know which." Dick says his mother 
was an Irishman, but I do not believe it. 

All this is fun, but some of this blundering 
leads to mischief. Lazy fellows ruin their 
trade, and then say that bad trade ruined 
them. 

Some fellows talk at random, as if they 
lived in a world turned upside down, for 
they always put things the wrong side up. 
A serving-man lost his situation through 
his drunken ways ; and, as he could get no 



CART BEFORE THE HORSE. l8t 

character, he charged his old master with 
being his ruin. 

"Robert complained the other day 
His master took his character away : 
* I take your character,' said he, ' no fear, 
Not for a thousand pounds a year.' " 

The man was his own downfall, and now he 
blames those who speak the truth about 
him. " He mistakes the effect for the cause," 
as our old schoolmaster says, and blames 
the bucket for the faults of the well. 

The other day a fellow said to me, " Don't 
you think Jones is a lucky chap ? " " No/' 
said I, " I think he is a hard-working man, 
and gets on because he deserves it." " Ah," 
was the man's answer, " don't tell me ; he 
has got a good trade, and a capital shop, 
and a fair capital, and I don't wonder that 
he makes money." Bless the man's heart ; 
Jones began with nothing, in a little, poking 
shop, and all he has was scraped together 
by hard labor and careful saving. The shop 
would never have kept him if he had not 
kept the shop, and he would have had no 
trade if he had not been a good tradesman ; 
but there, it's no use talking, some people 



i82 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

will never allow that thrift and temperance 
lead to thriving and comfort, for this would 
condemn themselves. So to quiet their 
consciences they put the cart before the 
horse. 

A very bad case of putting the cart before 
the horse is when a drinking old man talks 
as if he had been kept out of the grave by 
his beer, though that is the thing which 
carries people to their last home. He hap- 
pens to have a strong constitution, and so 
he can stand the effects of drink better than 
most, and then folks say it was the drink 
which gave him the constitution. When an 
old soldier comes alive out of battle, do we 
think that the shot and shell saved his life ? 
When we meet with a man who is so strong 
that he can be a great drinker and still seem 
little the worse, we must not say that he 
owes his strength to his beer, or we shall 
be putting the plough before the oxen. 

When a man thinks that he is to make 
himself good before he comes to Jesus to be 
saved, he is planting the fruit instead of the 
root ; and putting the chimney pots where 
the foundation should be. We do not save 
ourselves and then trust the Saviour ; but 



CART BEFORE THE HORSE. 183 

when the Saviour has worked salvation in 
us, then we work it out with fear and 
trembling. Be sure, good reader, that you 
put faith first, and works afterwards ; for, 
if not, you will put the cart before the horse. 



A LEAKING TAP IS A GREAT 
WASTER. 




A LEAKING tap is a great waster. 
Drop by drop, by day and by night, 
the liquor runs away, and the housewife 
(184) 



THE LEAKING TAP. 185 

wonders how so much can have gone. 
This is the fashion in which many laboring 
men are kept poor : they don't take care of 
the pence, and so they have no pounds to put 
in the bank. You cannot fill the rain-water 
butt if you do not catch the drops. A six- 
pence here, and a shilling there, and his 
purse is empty before a man dares to look 
in it. What with waste in the kitchen, 
waste at table, and waste at the public- 
house, fools and their money soon part to 
meet no more. If the wife wastes too, there 
are two holes in the barrel. Sometimes the 
woman dresses in tawdry finery and gets in 
debt to the tally-man ; and it is still worse 
if she takes to the bottle. When the goose 
drinks as deep as the gander, pots are soon 
empty, and the cupboard is bare. Then 
they talk about saving, like the man who 
locked the stable door after his horse was 
stolen. They will not save at the brim, but 
promise themselves and the pigs that they 
will do wonders when they get near the 
bottom. It is well to follow the good old 
rule : — 

" Spend so as ye may 
Spend for many a day." 



186 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

He who eats all the loaf at breakfast may 
whistle for his dinner, and get a dish of 
empties. If we do not save while we have 
it, we certainly shall not save after all is 
gone. There is no grace in waste. Econ- 
omy is a duty ; extravagance is a sin. The 
old Book saith, " He that hasteth to be rich 
shall not be innocent," and, depend upon it, 
he that hasteth to be poor is in much the 
same box. Stretch your legs according to 
the length of your blanket, and never spend 
all that you have : 

" Put a little by; 
Things may go awry." 

It will help to keep you from anxious 
care, — which is sinful, if you take honest 
care, — which is commendable. Lay up 
when young, and you shall firid when old ; 
but do not this greedily or selfishly, or God 
may send a curse on your store. Money 
is not a comfort by itself, for they said in 
the olden time — 

''They who have money are troubled about it, 
And they who have none are troubled without it." 

But though the dollar is not almighty, it 



THE LEAKING TAP. 187 

ought to be used for the Almighty, and not 
wasted in wicked extravagance. Even a 
dog will hide up a bone which he does not 
want, and it is said of wolves that they 
gnaw not the bones till the morrow; but 
many of our working men are without thrift 
or forethought, and, like children, they will 
eat all the cake at once if they can. When 
a frost comes they are poor frozen-out gar- 
deners, and ask for charity, when they 
ought to have laid up for a snowy day. I 
wonder they are not ashamed of them- 
selves. Those are three capital lines : — 

" Earn all you can, 
Save all you can, 
Give all you can." 

But our neighbor Scroggs acts on quite 
a different rule-of-three, and tries three 
other cans : 



" Eat all you can, 
Drink all you can, 
Spend all you can." 

He can do more of all these than is 
canny; it would be a good thing if he and 
the beer-can were a good deal further 
apart. 



188 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

I don't want any person to become a 
screw, or a hoarder, or a lover of money, 
but I do wish our working men would 
make better use of what they get. It is 
little enough, I know; but some make it 
less by squandering it. Solomon com- 
mends the good woman who " considereth 
a field and buyeth it : with the fruit of her 
hands she planteth a vineyard ; " he also 
tells the sluggard to go to the ant, and see 
how she stores for the winter. I am told 
that ants of this sort do not live in England, 
and I am afraid they dont ; but my master 
says he has seen them in France, and I 
think it would be a good idea to bring over 
the breed. My old friend Tusser says, — 

" 111 husbandry drinketh 
Himself out of door; 
Good Husbandry thinketh 
Of friend and of poor." 

The more of such good husbandry the 
merrier for old England. You cannot burn 
your faggots in autumn and then stack 
them for the winter; if you want the calf to 
become a cow, you must not be in a hurry 
to eat neats' feet. Money once spent is 



THE LEAKING TAP. 189 

like shot fired from a gun, you can never 
call it back. No matter how sorry you 
may be, the goldfinches are out of the cage, 
and they will not fly back for all your cry- 
ing. If a fellow gets into debt it is worse 
still, for that is a ditch in which many find 
mud, but none catch fish. When all his 
sugar is gone, a man's friends are not often 
very sweet upon him. People who have 
nothing are very apt to be thought worth 
nothing : mind, / don't say so, but a good 
many do. Wrinkled purses make wrinkled 
faces. It has been said that they laugh 
most who have least to lose, and it may be 
so ; but I am afraid that some of them laugh 
on the wrong side of their faces. Foolish 
spending buys a pennyworth of merry-mak- 
ing, but it costs many a pound of sorrow* 
The profligate sells his cow to buy a 
canary, and boils down a bullock to get 
half-a-pint of bad soup, and that he throws 
away as soon as he has tasted it. I should 
not care to spend all my living to buy a 
mouldy repentance, yet this is what many 
a prodigal has done, and many more will 
do. 

My friend, keep money in thy purse : " It 



190 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

is one of Solomon's proverbs," said one; 
another answered that it was not there. 
" Then," said Kit Lancaster, " it might have 
been, and if Solomon had ever known the 
miss of a shilling he w r ould have said it 
seven times over." I think that he does 
say as much as this in substance, if not in 
so many words, especially when he talks 
about the ant ; but be that how it may, be 
sure of this, that a pound in the pocket is 
as good as a friend at court, and rather 
better ; and if ever you live to want what 
you once wasted, it will fill you with woe 
enough to last you to your grave. He 
who put a pound of butter on a gridiron, 
not only lost his butter, but made such a 
blaze as he won't soon forget : foolish 
lavishness leads to dreadful wickedness, so 
John Ploughman begs all his mates to fight 
shy of it, and post off to the Post Office 
Savings' Bank. 

" For age and want save while you may ; 
No morning's sun lasts all the day." 

Money is not the chief thing, it is as far 
below the grace of God and faith in Christ 
as a ploughed field is below the stars ; but 



THE LEAKING TAP. 191 

still, godliness hath the promise of the life 
that now is as well as of that which is to 
come, and he who is wise enough to seek 
first the kingdom of God and his righteous- 
ness, should also be wise enough to use 
aright the other things which God is 
pleased to add unto him. 

Somewhere or other I met with a set of 
mottoes about gold, which I copied out, 
and here they are : I don't know who first 
pricked them down, but like a great many 
of the things which are stuck together in 
my books, I found them here and there, 
and they are none of mine : at least, I can- 
not claim the freehold, but have them on 
copyhold, which is a fair tenure. If the 
owners of these odds and ends will call for 
them at the house where this book is pub- 
lished they may have them on paying a 
shilling for the paper they are done up in. 

MOTTOES ABOUT GOLD. 

A vain man's motto is " Win gold and wear it." 

A generous man's motto is.." Win gold and share it." 
A miserly man's motto is. ..'■ Win gold and spare it." 
A profligate man's motto is." Win gold and spend it." 

A banker's motto is " Win gold and lend it." 

A gambler's motto is " Win gold or lose it." 

A wise man's motto is " Win gold and use it." 



FOOLS SET STOOLS FOR WISE 
MEN TO STUMBLE OVER. 




THIS is what they call " a lark." Fools 
set stools for wise men to stumble 
over. To ask questions is as easy as kissing 
your hand ; to answer them is hard as fat- 
(192) 



FOOLS SET STOOLS FOR WISE MEN. 193 

tening a greyhound. Any fool can throw 
a stone into a deep well, and the cleverest 
man in the parish may never be able to get 
it up again. Folly grows in all countries, 
and fools are all the world over, as he said 
who shod the goose. Silly people are 
pleased with their own nonsense, and think 
it rare fun to quiz their betters. To catch a 
wise man tripping is as good as bowling a 
fellow out at a cricket-match. 

" Folly is wise in her own eyes, 
Therefore she tries Wit to surprise. " 

There are difficulties in everything ex- 
cept in eating pancakes, and nobody ought 
to be expected to untie all the knots in a 
net, or to make that straight which God 
has made crooked. He is the greatest fool 
of all who pretends to explain everything, 
and says he will not believe what he cannot 
understand. There are bones in the meat, 
but am I to go hungry till I can eat them? 
Must I never enjoy a cherry till I find one 
without a stone ? John Ploughman is not 
of that mind. He is under no call to doubt, 
for he is not a doctor : when people try to 
puzzle him he tells them that those who 
13 



194 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

made the lock had better make the key, and 
those who put the cow in the pound had 
better get her out. Then they get cross, 
and John only says — You need not be 
crusty, for you are none too much baked. 

After all, what do we know if all our 
knowing was put together? It would all 
go in a thimble, and the girl's finger, too. 
A very small book would hold most men's 
learning, and every line would have a mis- 
take in it. Why, then, should we spend our 
lives in perplexity, tumbling about like pigs 
in a sack, and wondering how we shall ever 
get out again ? John knows enough to know 
that he does not know enough to explain 
all that he knows, and so he leaves the 
stools to the schools and the other — ools. 



A MAN IN A PASSION RIDES A 

HORSE THAT RUNS AWAY 

WITH HIM. 




WHEN passion has run away with a 
man, who knows where it will 
carry him? Once let a rider lose power 

(i9S) 



196 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

over his horse, and he may go over hedge 
and ditch, and end with a tumble into the 
stone-quarry and a broken neck. No one 
can tell in cold blood what he may do when 
he gets angry ; therefore it is best to run 
no risks. Those who feel their temper ris- 
ing will be wise if they rise themselves and 
walk off to the pump. Let them fill their 
mouths with cold water, hold it there ten 
minutes at the least, and then go indoors, 
and keep there till they feel cool as a cu- 
cumber. If you carry loose gunpowder in 
your pocket, you had better not go where 
sparks are flying ; and if you are bothered 
with an irritable nature, you should move 
off when folks begin teasing you. Better 
keep out of a quarrel than fight your way 
through it. 

Nothing is improved by anger unless it 
be the arch of a cat's back. A man with 
his back up is spoiling his figure. People 
look none the handsomer for being red in 
the face. It takes a great deal out of a 
man to get into a towering rage ; it is al- 
most as unhealthy as having a fit, and time 
has been when men have actually choked 
themselves with passion, and died on the 



A MAN IN A PASSION 197 

spot. Whatever wrong I suffer, it cannot 
do me half so much hurt as being angry 
about it ; for passion shortens life and poi- 
sons peace. 

When once we give way to temper, tem- 
per will claim a right of way, and come in 
easier every time. He that will be in a pet 
for any little thing will soon be out at 
elbows about nothing at all. A thunder- 
storm curdles the milk, and so does a pas- 
sion sour the heart and spoil the character. 

He who is in a tantrum shuts his 
eyes and opens his mouth, and very 
soon says what he will be sorry for. 
Better bite your lips now than smart for 
life. It is easier to keep a bull out of a 
china shop than it is to get him out again ; 
and, besides, there's no end of a bill to pay 
for damages. 

A man burning with anger carries a mur- 
derer inside his waistcoat; the sooner he 
can cool down the better for himself and all 
around him. He will have to give an ac- 
count for his feelings as well as for his 
words and actions, and that account will 
cost him many tears. It is a cruel thing to 
tease quick-tempered people, for, though it 
may be sport to you, it is death to them ; 



198 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

at least, it is death to their peace, and may- 
be something worse. We know who said, 
" Woe to that man by whom the offence 
cometh." 

Shun a furious man as you would a mad 
dog, but do it kindly, or you may make him 
worse than he would be. Don't put a man 
out when you know he is out with himself. 
When his monkey is up be very careful, for 
he means mischief. A surly soul is sure to 
quarrel ; he says the cat will break his hearty 
and the coal scuttle will be the death of him. 

" A man in a rage 
Needs a great iron cage. 
He'll tear and he'll dash 
Till he comes to a smash ; 
So let's out of his way 
As quick as we may." 

As we quietly move off let us pray for 
the angry person ; for a man in a thorough 
passion is as sad a sight as to see a neigh- 
bors house on fire and no water handy to 
put out the flames. 

Let us wish the fellow on the runaway 
horse a soft ditch to tumble in, and sense 
enough never to get on the creature's back 
again. 



WHERE THE PLOUGH SHALL FAIL 

TOGO, 
THERE THE WEEDS WILL SURELY 

GROW. 




I 



N my young days farmers used to leave 
broad headlands ; and, as there were 

(199) 



200 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

plenty of good-for-nothing hedges and 
ditches, they raised a prime crop of weeds, 
and these used to sow the farm, and give a 
heap of trouble. Then Farmer Numskull 
" never could make out nohow where all 
they there weeds could 'a come from." In 
those good old times, as stupids call them, 
old Tusser said : 

" Slack never tby weeding for dear or for cheap, 
The corn shall reward it when harvest ye reap." 

He liked to see weeding done just after 
rain : no bad judge either. He said, 

" Then after a shower, to weeding a snatch, 
'Tis more easy then the root to despatch." 

Weeding is wanted now, for ill weeds 
grow apace, and the hoe must always go ; 
but still lands are a fine sight cleaner 
than they used to be, for now farmers go 
a deal closer to work, and grub up the 
hedges, and make large fields, to save 
every bit of land. Quite right, too. The 
less there is wasted the more there is 
for us all. 

To clothe the fields with plenty and all our barns endow, 
We'll turn up every corner and drive the useful plough. 



NO PLOUGH, MANY WEEDS. 201 

No weed shall haunt the furrow, before us all shall bow, 
We'll gaily yield our labor to guide the useful plough. 

It would be well to do the same thing in 
other concerns. Depend upon it, weeds 
will come wherever you give them half a 
chance. When children have no school to 
go to they will pretty soon be up to mis- 
chief; and if they are not taught the gos- 
pel, the old enemy will soon teach them to 
thieve, and lie, and swear. You can tell 
with your eyes shut where there's a school 
and where there's none : only use your ears 
and hear the young ones talk. 

So far goes the plough, and where that 
leaves off the docks and the thistles begin, 
as sure as dirt comes where there's no wash- 
ing, and mice where there are no cats. They 
tell me that in London and other big 
towns vice and crime are sure to spread 
where there are no razored schools and Sun- 
day schools ; and I don't wonder. I hope 
the day will never come when good people 
will give up teaching the boys and girls. 
Keep that plough going, say I, till you have 
cut up all the charlock. Don't leave a rod 
of ground for the devil to sow his tares in. 
In my young time few people in our parish 



202 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

could either read or write, and what were 
they to do but gossip, and drink and fight, 
and play old gooseberry ? Now that teach- 
ing is to be had, people will all be scholars, 
and, as they can buy a Testament for a 
penny, I hope they will search the Script- 
ures, and may God bless the word to the 
cleansing of their souls. When the school- 
master gets to his work in downright 
earnest, I hope and trust there will be a 
wonderful clearance of the weeds. 

The best plough in all the world is the 
preaching of the gospel. Leave a village 
without Christ crucified, and it soon be- 
comes a great tangle of thorn, and briar, 
and brake, and bramble ; but when sound 
and sensible preaching comes, it tears all 
up like a steam plough, and the change 
is something to sing about. "The desert 
shall rejoice and blossom as the rose." 

Inside a man's heart there is need of a 
thorough ploughing by God's grace, for 
if any part of our nature is left to itself, 
the weeds of sin will smother the soul. 
Every day we have need to be looked 
after, for follies grow in no time, and come 
to a great head before you can count twenty. 
God speed the plough. 



ALL IS LOST THAT IS POURED 
INTO A CRACKED DISH. 




COOK is wasting her precious liquor, for 
it runs out almost as fast as it runs in. 
The sooner she stops that game the better. 
This makes me think of a good deal of 

(203) 



204 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

preaching; it is labor in vain, because it 
does not stay in the minds of the hearers, 
but goes in at one ear and out at the other. 
When men go to market they are all alive 
to do a trade, but in a place of worship they 
are not more than half awake, and do not 
seem to care whether they profit or not by 
what they hear. I once heard a preacher 
say, " Half of you are asleep, half are in- 
attentive, and the rest ." He never 

finished that sentence, for the people began 
to smile, and here and there one burst out 
laughing. Certainly, many only go to 
meeting to stare about. 

"Attend your church, the parson cries, 
To church each fair one goes ; 
The old ones go to close their eyes, 
The young to eye their clothes.' , 

You might as well preach to the stone 
images in the old church as to people who 
are asleep. Some old fellows come into 
our meeting, pitch into their corner, and 
settle themselves down for a quiet snooze 
as knowingly as if the pew was a sleeping- 
car on the railway. Still, all the sleeping 
at service is not the fault of the poor people, 



THE CRACKED DISH. 205 

for some parsons put a lot of sleeping stuff 
into their sermons. Will Shepherd says 
they mesmerize the people. (I think that 
is the right word, but I'm not sure.) I saw 
a verse in a real live book by Mr. Cheales, 
the vicar of Brockham, a place which is 
handy to my home. I'll give it you. 

" The ladies praise our curate's eyes, 
I never see their light divine, 
For when he prays he closes them, 
And when he preaches closes mine." 

Well, if curates are heavy in style, the peo- 
ple will soon be heavy in sleep. Even when 
hearers are awake many of them are for- 
getful. It is like pouring a jug of ale be- 
tween the bars of a gridiron, to try and 
' teach them good doctrine. Water on a 
duck's back does have some effect, but ser- 
mons by the hundred are as much lost upon 
many men's hearts as if they had been 
spoken to a kennel of hounds. Preaching 
to some fellows is like whipping the water 
or lashing the air. As well talk to a tur- 
nip, or whistle to a dead donkey, as preach 
to these dull ears. A year's sermons will 
not produce an hour's repentance till the 
grace of God comes in. 



2o5 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

We have a good many hangers on who 
think that their duty to God consists in hear- 
ing sermons, and that the best fruit of their 
hearing is to talk of what they have heard. 
How they do lay the law down when they 
get argifying about doctrines ! Their relig- 
ion all runs to ear and tongue : neither their 
heart nor their hand is a scrap the better. 
This is poor work, and will never pay the 
piper. The sermon which only gets as far 
as the ear is like a dinner eaten in a dream. 
It is ill to lie soaking in the gospel like a 
bit of coal in a milk-pan, never the whiter 
for it all. 

What can be the good of being hearers 
only ? It disappoints the poor preacher, 
and it brings no blessing to the man him- 
self. Looking at a plum won't sweeten 
your mouth, staring at a coat won't cover 
your back, and lying on the bank won't 
catch the fish in the river. The cracked 
dish is never the better for all that is poured 
into it: it is like our forgetful heart, it 
wants to be taken away, and a new one put 
instead of it. 



GRASP ALL AND LOSE ALL. 



WHILE so many poor neighbors are 
around us it is a sin to hoard. If 
we do we shall be losers, for rats eat corn, 
rust cankers metal, and the curse of God 

(207) 



208 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

spoils riches. A tight fist is apt to get the 
rheumatism, an open hand bears the palm. 
It is good to give a part to sweeten the rest 
A great stack of hay is apt to heat and take 
fire; cut a piece out and let the air in, and 
the rest will be safe. What say you, Mr. 
Reader, to cut a few pounds out of your 
heap, and send them to help feed the or- 
phans 



SCATTER AND INCREASE. 




PEOPLE will not believe it, and yet it is 
true as the gospel, that giving leads 
to thriving. John Bunyan said, 

" There was a man, and some did count him mad, 
The more he gave away, the more he had." 
14 (209) 



210 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

He had an old saying to back him, one 
which is as old as the hills, and as good as 
gold— 

" Give and spend 
And God will send." 

If a man cannot pay his debts he must 
not think of giving, for he has nothing of 
his own, and it is thieving to give away 
other people's property. Be just before 
you are generous. Don't give to Peter what 
is due to Paul. They used to say that 
* Give " is dead, and "Restore" is buried, 
but I do not believe it any more than I do 
another saying, " There are only two good 
men, one is dead, and the other is not born." 
No, no : there are many free hearts yet 
about, and John Ploughman knows a good- 
ish few of them — people who don't cry, 
"" Go next door," but who say, " Here's a 
little help, and we wish we could make it 
ten times as much." God has often a great 
share in a small house, and many a little 
man has a large heart. 

Now, you will find that liberal people are 
happy people, and get more enjoyment out 
of what they have than folks of a churlish 
mind. Misers never rest till they are put 



SCATTER AND INCREASE. 211 

to bed with a shovel : they often get so 
wretched that they would hang themselves 
only they grudge the expense of a rope. 
Generous souls are made happy by the hap- 
piness of others : the money they give to 
the poor buys them more pleasure than any 
other that they lay out. 

I have seen men of means give coppers, 
and they have been coppery in everything. 
They carried on a tin-pot business, lived like 
beggars, and died like dogs. I have seen 
others give to the poor and to the cause of 
God by shovelfuls and they have had it 
back by barrow-loads. They made good 
use of their stewardship, and the great Lord 
has trusted them with more, while the bells 
in their hearts have rung out merry peals 
when they have thought of widows who 
blessed them, and orphan children who 
smiled into their faces. Ah me, that there 
should be creatures in the shape of men 
whose souls are of no use except as salt to 
keep their bodies from rotting ! Please let 
us forget them, for it makes me feel right 
down sick to think of their nasty ways. 
Let us see what we can do to scatter joy all 
around us, just as the sun throws his light 



212 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

on hill and dale. He that gives God his 
heart will not deny him his money. He 
will take a pleasure in giving, but he will 
not wish to be seen, nor will he expect to 
have a pound of honor for sixpence. He 
will look out for worthy objects ; for giving 
to lazy, drunken spendthrifts is wasteful and 
wicked ; you might as well sugar a brickbat 
and think to turn it into a pudding. A 
wise man will go to work in a sensible way, 
and will so give his money to the poor that 
he will be lending it to the Lord. No se- 
curity can be better and no interest can be 
surer. The Bank is open at all hours. It 
is the best Savings' Bank in the nation. 
There is an office open at the Boys' and 
Girls' Orphanage, Stockwell, London. Draw 
your cheques or send your orders to C. H. 
Spurgeon. There will soon be five hun- 
dred mouths to fill and backs to cover. 
Take shares in this company. John Plough- 
man wishes he could do more for it. 



EVERY BIRD LIKES ITS OWN 
NEST. 




IT pleases me to see how fond the birds 
are of their little homes. No doubt 
each one thinks his own nest is the very best ; 

(213) 



214 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES, 

and so it is for him, just as my home is the 
best palace for me, even for me King John, 
the king of the Cottage of Content. I will 
ask no more if providence only continues 
to give me — 

" A little field well tilled, 
A little house well filled, 
And a little wife well willed." 

An Englishman's house is his castle, and 
the true Briton is always fond of the old 
roof-tree. Green grows the house-leek on 
the thatch, and sweet is the honey-suckle 
at the porch, and dear are the gilly-flowers 
in the front garden ; but best of all is the 
good wife within, who keeps all as neat as 
a new pin. Frenchmen may live in their 
coffee-houses, but an Englishman's best life 
is seen at home. 

" My own house, though small, 
Is the best house of all." 

When boys get tired of eating tarts, and 
maids have done with winning hearts, and 
lawyers cease to take their fees, and leaves 
leave off to grow on trees, then will John 
Ploughman cease to love his own dear home. 
John likes to hear some sweet voice sing — 



EVERY BIRD LIKES ITS OWN NEST. 215 

" 'Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam, 
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home; 
A charm from the sky seems to hallow us there, 
Which, wherever we rove, is not met with elsewhere 

Home ! Home ! sweet, sweet home ! 
There's no place like home ! " 

People who take no pleasure in their own 
home are queer folks, and no better than 
they should be. Every dog is a lion at his. 
own door, and a man should make most of 
those who make most of him. Women 
should be house-keepers and keep in the 
house. That man is to be pitied who has 
married one of the Miss Gadabouts, Mrs. 
Cackle and her friend Mrs. Dressemout are 
enough to drive their husbands into the 
county jail for shelter: there can be no 
peace where such a piece of goods as either 
of them is to be found. Old Tusser said — 

" 111 huswifery pricketh 
Herself up with pride : 
Good huswifery tricketh 
Her house as a bride. 

" 111 huswifery moveth 
With gossip to spend : 
Good huswifery loveth 
Her household to tend." 



216 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

The woman whose husband wastes his 
evenings with low fellows at the beer-shop 
is as badly off as a slave ; and when the 
Act of Parliament shuts up most of these 
ruin-houses, it will be an Act of Emanci- 
pation for her. Good husbands cannot have 
too much of their homes, and if their wives 
make their homes comfortable they will 
soon grow proud of them. When good 
fathers get among their children they are 
as merry as mice in malt. Our Joe Scroggs 
says he's tired of his house, and the house 
certainly looks tired of him, for it is all out 
of windows, and would get out of doors if 
it knew how. He will never be weary in 
well doing, for he never began. What a 
different fellow he would be if he could be- 
lieve that the best side of the world is a 
man's own fireside. I know it is so, and so 
do many more. 

" Seek home for rest, 
For home is best." 

What can it be that so deludes lots of 
people who ought to know better ? They 
have sweet wives, and nice families, and 
comfortable houses, and they are several 



EVERY BIRD LIKES ITS OWN NEST. 217 

cuts above us poor country bumpkins, and 
yet they must be out of an evening. What 
is it for ? Surely it can't be the company ; 
for the society of the woman you love, who 
is the mother of your children, is worth all 
the companies that ever met together. I 
fear they are away soaking their clay, and 
washing all their wits away. If so, it is a 
great shame, and those who are guilty of it 
ought to be trounced. O that drink ! that 
drink ! 

Dear, dear, what stuff people will pour 
into their insides ! Even if I had to be 
poisoned I should like to know what I was 
swallowing. A cup of tea at home does 
people a sight more good than all the mix- 
tures you get abroad. There's nothing like 
the best home-brewed, and there's no better 
mash-tub for making it in than the old-fash- 
ioned earthenware teapot. Our little chil- 
dren sing, "Please, father, come home," 
and John Ploughman joins with thousands 
of little children in that simple prayer which 
every man who is a man should be glad to 
answer. I like to see husband and wife 
longing to see each other. 






218 JOHN PLOUGHMAN'S PICTURES. 

a An ear that waits to catch, 
A hand upon the latch ; 
A step that hastens its sweet rest to win ; 
A world of care without, 
A world of strife shut out, 
A world of love shut in." 

Fellow workmen, try to let it be so with 
you and your wives. Come home, and 
bring your wages with you, and make your- 
selves happy by making everyone happy 
around you. 

My printer jogs my elbow, and says, 
"That will do: I can't get any more in." 
Then, Mr. Passmore, I must pass over 
many things, but I cannot leave off without 
praising God for his goodness to me and 
mine, and all my brother ploughmen, for it 
is of his great mercy that he lets us live in 
this dear old country and loads us with so 
many benefits. 

This bit of poetry shall be my finish : I 
mean every word of it. Let us sing it 
together. 

" What pleasant groves, what goodly fields ! 
What fruitful hills and vales have we ! 
How sweet an air our climate yields ! 
How blest with flocks and herds we be ! 



EVERY BIRD LIKES ITS OWN NEST. 219 

How milk and honey doth o'erflow ! 

How clear and wholesome are our springs ! 
How safe from ravenous beasts we go ! 

And, oh, how free from poisonous things ! 

" For these, and for our grass, our corn ; 

For all that springs from blade or bough ; 
For all those blessings that adorn, 

Both wood and field, this kingdom through; 
For all of these, thy praise we sing ; 

And humbly, Lord, entreat thee too, 
That fruit to thee we forth may bring, 

As unto us thy creatures do." 



THE END 



Gbe Bltemus %ibtaiy. 

A choice collection of Standard and Popular books, 
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82 <* 




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